Since I really don't want to rewrite my PhD application, I've spent a little while researching ADHD and its connection to TV. Scientific American Mind's website does not charge to look at an article so I used their sources and searched the scientific literature on scholar.google.com using their names.
Here's what I learned: I was wrong.
Background: The first link below goes to the best article about background ADHD research, not pushing an opinion one way or the other on whether TV causes it. From that I learned that ADHD is overwhelmingly genetic -- well-controlled research shows that only 20% of cases are not genetically influenced, meaning only 1 out of 5 kids gets it purely from the environment. It's complicated (of course) because parents with genetic tendency toward ADHD themselves also make certain kinds of parenting errors -- bad boundaries, largely -- and they themselves have the same problems their children do, namely impulsivity and lack of emotional control. What surprised me: ADHD brains are physically smaller, they're missing brain tissue, in many different parts, not just one like I'd thought. ADHD kids don't have the option of obeying when they're asked to maintain focus or control impulses because they simply don't have as much brain to control 'executive function' or inhibition. Uppers like Ritalin allow what tissue they do have to light up and so they get the OPTION of exerting control over their behavior like normal kids have from the start. This background article also has a section on strategies you can use to help a kid take advantage of the choice to exert self-control even if he only has it for two seconds -- stuff like hanging STOP sign next to the dinner table and teaching the child to count to himself when he gets ramped. The good news: some ADHD brains get normal on their own. Sometimes not the whole brain is smaller, just a little of it, and the brain sort of gets back on track and heals itself by adolescence. Since neither of you guys have a family history of ADHD, since you guys put so much time into stimulating other parts of Lucian's development, and since he could be fascinated by a book with no pictures by the age of 3, I'd be surprised if his whole brain is affected -- but the descriptions of typical ADHD behavior might even resonate so much with you that they'll be comforting. This is a physical thing and there is a LOT of money being poured into solving it.
Whether TV causes it: It is nowhere near as solidly established as I'd thought, and it's still very controversial. The critical window is from birth to 3 or 4 years old -- during that time, every hour per day increases the likelihood of an attention disorder at age 7 by roughly 10%, using data from 1300+ kids (but self-report from their parents regarding how much time they watched tv, which means they probably watched more than they reported; that doesn't change the results too much since it would be true for parents who let their kids watch a lot of tv as well as parents who restrict it). A careful comparison of types of media shows that educational tv causes fewer problems (actually is less strongly correlated with them; I am biased because I believe the correlation is causal, sorry). This may be because the unnaturally fast and so hypnotic rate of image change in entertainment tv ramps up the nervous system's expectations for stimulation, and prevents stimulation from reaching normal levels in parts of the brain not involved in sensory processing.
But there's contrary evidence too; apparently how much tv a kid watches at age 5 does not correlate strongly with attentional disorder at age 6, and the debate between researchers is so vicious it's flat out funny. I was wrong because I thought the causality had been totally established -- like smoking causing cancer -- but actually it hasn't. The way the nervous system works and other evidence points that way, but it totally is not proven, and a lot of people get really up in arms about it. I suggest you read it for yourself, because I'm already pretty convinced, and I don't find the contrary evidence anywhere near as solid.
My conclusions: it's known for certain that an infant brain comes fully wired, overly wired, with neurons so messily connected in one big chunk that it's like white noise on an old tv -- every frequency is busy and the result is useless, just full-bore meaningless 'on'. Healthy brains actually develop by LOSING connections, not making them -- in order to get a symphony from solid white noise, you have to delete the extra clashing frequencies you don't want, and then what you do want is clear and meaningul. The brain maintains connections that get used; a child whose time is spent highly stimulated visually will keep those pathways very strong, but they will not need pathways unrelated to nervous system stimulation -- so lots of other connections will die that otherwise would not, and you get a kid with a smaller brain who has a very high requirement for external stimulation. This may not lead to ADHD, but high requirements for external stimulation lead to a host of other issues, namely boredom, which produces a tendency toward addiction, risky decisions and unacceptable social behavior. Here's what it does in an adult: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-boredom .
So: it isn't proven that tv causes ADHD, but it is highly correlated before age 3 or 4, and what is known about critical windows of development suggest that the nervous system can get rigged for stimulation in such a way that the investment in less tv now will pay off in a less bored child (and a less frustrated parent) later. If it means turning your infant's seat so he sees you instead of the TV, or working on keeping the tv off more overall, it sounds worth the effort to me.
My sources:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=informing-the-adhd-debate
Comprehensive review of research on ADHD
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tv-weakens-attention
Relationship of ADHD and infant TV exposure
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/113/4/708
The actual research that little article is based on; pretty technical, but the abstract and the introduction are mostly in English
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/120/5/986
What type of media seems to cause the problem (they compare violent, non-violent/non-educational, and educational)
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-boredom
What rapid-fire entertainment does to an adult: high stimulation requirements, boredom and addiction
After an hour of successful procrastination, I now have to have lunch and get to work.
Here's what I learned: I was wrong.
Background: The first link below goes to the best article about background ADHD research, not pushing an opinion one way or the other on whether TV causes it. From that I learned that ADHD is overwhelmingly genetic -- well-controlled research shows that only 20% of cases are not genetically influenced, meaning only 1 out of 5 kids gets it purely from the environment. It's complicated (of course) because parents with genetic tendency toward ADHD themselves also make certain kinds of parenting errors -- bad boundaries, largely -- and they themselves have the same problems their children do, namely impulsivity and lack of emotional control. What surprised me: ADHD brains are physically smaller, they're missing brain tissue, in many different parts, not just one like I'd thought. ADHD kids don't have the option of obeying when they're asked to maintain focus or control impulses because they simply don't have as much brain to control 'executive function' or inhibition. Uppers like Ritalin allow what tissue they do have to light up and so they get the OPTION of exerting control over their behavior like normal kids have from the start. This background article also has a section on strategies you can use to help a kid take advantage of the choice to exert self-control even if he only has it for two seconds -- stuff like hanging STOP sign next to the dinner table and teaching the child to count to himself when he gets ramped. The good news: some ADHD brains get normal on their own. Sometimes not the whole brain is smaller, just a little of it, and the brain sort of gets back on track and heals itself by adolescence. Since neither of you guys have a family history of ADHD, since you guys put so much time into stimulating other parts of Lucian's development, and since he could be fascinated by a book with no pictures by the age of 3, I'd be surprised if his whole brain is affected -- but the descriptions of typical ADHD behavior might even resonate so much with you that they'll be comforting. This is a physical thing and there is a LOT of money being poured into solving it.
Whether TV causes it: It is nowhere near as solidly established as I'd thought, and it's still very controversial. The critical window is from birth to 3 or 4 years old -- during that time, every hour per day increases the likelihood of an attention disorder at age 7 by roughly 10%, using data from 1300+ kids (but self-report from their parents regarding how much time they watched tv, which means they probably watched more than they reported; that doesn't change the results too much since it would be true for parents who let their kids watch a lot of tv as well as parents who restrict it). A careful comparison of types of media shows that educational tv causes fewer problems (actually is less strongly correlated with them; I am biased because I believe the correlation is causal, sorry). This may be because the unnaturally fast and so hypnotic rate of image change in entertainment tv ramps up the nervous system's expectations for stimulation, and prevents stimulation from reaching normal levels in parts of the brain not involved in sensory processing.
But there's contrary evidence too; apparently how much tv a kid watches at age 5 does not correlate strongly with attentional disorder at age 6, and the debate between researchers is so vicious it's flat out funny. I was wrong because I thought the causality had been totally established -- like smoking causing cancer -- but actually it hasn't. The way the nervous system works and other evidence points that way, but it totally is not proven, and a lot of people get really up in arms about it. I suggest you read it for yourself, because I'm already pretty convinced, and I don't find the contrary evidence anywhere near as solid.
My conclusions: it's known for certain that an infant brain comes fully wired, overly wired, with neurons so messily connected in one big chunk that it's like white noise on an old tv -- every frequency is busy and the result is useless, just full-bore meaningless 'on'. Healthy brains actually develop by LOSING connections, not making them -- in order to get a symphony from solid white noise, you have to delete the extra clashing frequencies you don't want, and then what you do want is clear and meaningul. The brain maintains connections that get used; a child whose time is spent highly stimulated visually will keep those pathways very strong, but they will not need pathways unrelated to nervous system stimulation -- so lots of other connections will die that otherwise would not, and you get a kid with a smaller brain who has a very high requirement for external stimulation. This may not lead to ADHD, but high requirements for external stimulation lead to a host of other issues, namely boredom, which produces a tendency toward addiction, risky decisions and unacceptable social behavior. Here's what it does in an adult: http://www.sciam.com/article
So: it isn't proven that tv causes ADHD, but it is highly correlated before age 3 or 4, and what is known about critical windows of development suggest that the nervous system can get rigged for stimulation in such a way that the investment in less tv now will pay off in a less bored child (and a less frustrated parent) later. If it means turning your infant's seat so he sees you instead of the TV, or working on keeping the tv off more overall, it sounds worth the effort to me.
My sources:
http://www.sciam.com/article
Comprehensive review of research on ADHD
http://www.sciam.com/article
Relationship of ADHD and infant TV exposure
http://pediatrics.aappublicatio
The actual research that little article is based on; pretty technical, but the abstract and the introduction are mostly in English
http://pediatrics.aappublicatio
What type of media seems to cause the problem (they compare violent, non-violent/non-educational, and educational)
http://www.sciam.com/article
What rapid-fire entertainment does to an adult: high stimulation requirements, boredom and addiction
After an hour of successful procrastination, I now have to have lunch and get to work.
