Babies on Skype

"Grandparents, take heart!  Research suggests your little dumplings know they're interacting with you in a way that's more profound than watching Sesame Street."  This is the good news from Adriene LaFrance in her Atlantic article, "Do Babies Know When They're Skyping?."  Here are a few key excerpts from her most interesting article:

"'Babies who are pretty young are able to pick up, in particular, whether or not an adult is actually responding to them in real time,' said Elisabeth McClure, a researcher who focuses on children and media at Georgetown University.  'Some television shows try to imitate this.  You see, for example, with Elmo, or on Blue's Clue's, they look directly at the camera and pretend to interact with the child.  There's evidence that babies can tell the difference as early as 6 months old.'

"This is meaningful for a few reasons, not least of which is cultural.  Extended families are increasingly spread across greater geographic distances.  Video calls are how many babies first meet their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, and other people who love them.  Video-chat technologies, then, have major implications for how humans perceive key relationships....

"A growing body of research shows that babies appear to thrive on real-time video interactions.  Researchers have found that toddlers are more comforted by their mothers via video chat than they are through audio alone.  And video chat appears to be, conceptually, much easier for babies to grasp than a phone conversation."

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