Gone are the days when kids were encouraged to play with dolls and toy trucks. New age parents have now taken a liking to e-toys that popularly include baby laptops, cellphones and talking farms. In fact, these are now being marketed as the tools to improve your baby’s verbal skills.
But a new study led by Anna V Sosa, an associate professor of communications science, Northern Arizona University in US, questions the credibility of these toys in a baby’s cognitive development. This study was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
The study has found that babies spoke less while playing with e-toys as opposed to traditional toys such as blocks or read board books, to which they responded better. Even the parents spoke and responded to baby’s babbling comparatively more.
While playing with electronic toys parents used fewer adult words, there was also a decrease in traditional conversation, fewer parental responses and fewer content-specific words, than when playing with traditional toys or books.
The overall results of this study discourages the purchase of e-toys for young children, even though they are often promoted as being educational are are also quite expensive.
With inputs from PTI.
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