The topicality of the issue of how TV viewing and computer games affect the development of toddlers, children, and teenagers is rising. Jackson’s (2018) article “Does TV viewing during toddlerhood predict social difficulties and conduct problems?” is dedicated to discussing the correlation between TV viewing and the behavioral development of toddlers. The most significant conclusion of Jackson (2018) is that the development of toddlers depends not on the amount of time they spend watching TV per se but on the content they consume.
According to the conducted observations, if a family does not engage the child in watching interactive TV programs, there is a high risk that he will have behavioral problems and social difficulties. In other words, this means that watching age‐appropriate content will help a toddler’s development. Besides, Jackson (2018) informs that excessive TV viewing does not cause toddlers’ social or behavioral problems. From what is written above, Jackson (2018) infers that a child will be better off if he excessively watches TV programs that were created for his age than spends an average amount of time watching content for adults.
Remarkably, the article of Jackson (2018) is based on the quantitative analysis of the data retrieved from numerous studies conducted earlier. The conclusions are not based only on subjective interpretation of observation of the behavior of a small sample of toddlers. More precisely, the study analyzes the behavior of approximately 10,000 toddlers. The big sample guarantees the quality and the reliability of the results. In addition to that, the article shows that a researcher should be flexible and check more than one variable even if he tests whether there is a correlation between behavioral problems and excessive TV viewing. For example, Jackson (2018) also investigates correlations between social and behavioral issues, on one side, and family conflict, maternal involvement, depression and age, corporal punishment, low cognitive ability, and child’s gender and race, on the other side.
The article of Jackson (2018) is also illustrative of the research methods that could be used to investigate human development. For example, usually, such studies as based either on experimental or correlational methods or case studies. In the article on the behavioral development of children, the author employs the correlational approach because he analyzes relationships between several variables. The dependent variable is the behavioral development of toddlers, while independent variables are excessive TV viewing, adult programs viewing, and unattended TV viewing.
The most valuable skill that should be used during the analysis of scholarly resources is critical thinking. Undoubtedly, authors do a lot of work while preparing an article. Besides, before being published in scientific journals, articles are peer-reviewed because it helps to improve their quality.
Nonetheless, students should critically evaluate any materials they read and compare and contrast the results of various papers before coming to a conclusion. In addition to that, this assignment illustrates that note-taking is an essential part of working with scholarly resources. Notes help not to forget ideas that come to mind during the process of reading an article. Finally, it also should be mentioned that this assignment helps to realize how to read articles more efficiently. More precisely, the first step is to indicate the purpose of the article and the reason to read it. When the first step is completed, a student could easily understand which details of the paper to focus attention on.
References
Jackson, D. B. (2018). Does TV viewing during toddlerhood predict social difficulties and conduct problems? Infant and Child Development, 27(4), e2086. Web.