"Your Baby Can Read": Is this B.S. or what?

[Skeptical Greg]

I would really be interested in reading the argument and examining the references with regards to your implication that early reading is detrimental to later success in life, or even completely unrelated to success in school and later life.

Where was that implied ?

The suggestion is that there is no indication,that there is any advantage to early reading development.

Besides, this program does not teach reading, with any reasonable definition of the word..

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here's a blog article from Steven Novella. Spoiler Warning: It doesn't work.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=569

Guess it's too late to reply to Steve's blog entry. That Cambridge claim is a hoax. I find it amazing that after being revealed as a hoax, this is the second time in as many months I've seen a skeptic reference to the supposed study.

I think I need to dig up the links and post a reminder thread on it.

 

[Trakar]

Where was that implied ?

If there is not a detriment, then the argument is more with the marketing of this particular product, moreso than any issue of whether there are demonstrable benefits or harms inherent to the infant learning system exemplified in the product.

The suggestion is that there is no indication,that there is any advantage to early reading development.

I think you'll find that, as stated, this is a highly contentious assertion that is largely rejected by many if not most early childhood development and education professionals and specialists.

There are significant and profound differences in stating that children of average intelligence usually catch up to the reading abilities of children taught to read early at around third grade, and saying that there is no advantage to early reading development.

Besides, this program does not teach reading, with any reasonable definition of the word..

What reasonable definition of beginning reading skills would you propose, which would be excluded by what this program offers?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Learning the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they represent ...

 

[Foolmewunz]

as opposed to Phh ooooo t (soft "F", umlauted "o" and a hard "T")?



And that is a big part of what early reading is all about, memorizing that this word sounds like this and means that object or action. I've only seen one of the commercials and it was a few years ago, so I may be mistaken about the letter sounds and combinations, but even if it is just the rote memorization of a few hundred words and what those words stand for, phonetics is much easier to teach when a child has an established vocabulary and already made the mental connection that words are related to objects and actions.

Huh? No, reading is not recognizing that a combination of shapes makes up a heiroglyph. Reading is recogonizing that letters and letter combinations have sounds, and that put together they make up a word and a word has a meaning. One of the words they use in the demo I've seen is bellybutton. Wow! And such a big word, too! Isn't little Johnny smart?

But then why not navel? That's the proper word, after all. It's shorter and would be easier to read. Well here's the trick. The total combination of letters is easier to recognize if you compare

b e l l y b u t t o n

n a v e l

The kid recognizes the 11 letters as a picture of a word, not as a word that he/she has worked out, letter by letter. We have a phonetic alphabet.

You make it sound like spending a couple of hours a day focussed on a specific learning task with infants is unusual or somehow excessive?

Four hours a day? Yes, I'd say that's excessive. I've got a toddler at home, and even with mom and the amah switching off, they'd never get him to sit still for more than 30 minutes on that task. And the more important thing is that infants and toddlers are supposed to be mucking about in their world and learning things that are useful to them, not impressive to us. Exploring and learning to crawl and walk are actually very important to physical brain development.

To be clear - I am not against early reading..... If It Is Reading. I'm against this sort of parlor trick. As I said before, it's like the amazing baby who can look at the pictures of all the presidents and name them. It's a trick. Constant repetition and drilling.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Learning the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they represent ...

Oh, sure! Say what I was saying (in several over-worded paragraphs) in less than fifteen words!

 

[Skeptical Greg]

I enjoyed what you had to say. It did a good job of elaborating on my point ...

Thanks for taking the time and effort..

 

[Foolmewunz]

Except for the fact that I'd never do it to my kid, and thus I hope no one would make the same experiment on theirs..... Well, I think you could prove the efficacy of this "reading".

Make a flash card with 83@&&! on it. Every time you show the card, say "nose" and point to your nose. After you've done this fifty times, show the card and point to the baby's nose and then your nose, each time, saying, "nose".

What would the result be?

Again, anyone having a toddler at home wouldn't have to make the test. We know exactly what would happen. Little Marcello would se 83@&&!, and point to his nose. See how smart my little boy is, I tricked him into showing off by making a mistake. (But it wouldn't be a mistake to him, because he'd have learned it by repetition from me, someone he trusted..... yet, is it reading?)

 

[pgwenthold]

"I have a great practical joke you can play on a two year old child. If you have a two year old child, and you want to play a practical joke on them, every time you are around them, talk _wrong_. Then, on his first day of school, he asks the teacher, 'May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?'"

Steve Martin - A Wild and Crazy Guy

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Two year olds are so easy ...

 

[Nosi]

Two year olds are so easy ...

Almost as easy as Truthers.