Posts Tagged ‘ Kid Watching ’

Too Much Screen Time: Cultural Changes Which Affect Reading

Jan 15th, 2010 | By

By Dr. Ann Harvey, Associate Professor of Reading, Western New Mexico University Young children spend much time in front of a screen.  Whether it is a TV screen or a computer screen, there seems to be one result:  the child’s near point vision development suffers.  Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has noticed the problem because they have recommended that no more than one to two hours of quality TV, video, or internet be viewed each day for older children and no screen time should be given to children under the age of two.  Beginning readers need to have all the physical benefits of learning to read with minimal effort.  Since 80% of information gathered is visual, this is an important aspect of learning.  Having both eyes move, align, fixate, and focus as a team enhances the ability to interpret and understand the potential visual information that is available.  Extra effort spent on getting print in focus should be used on comprehension efforts. An emergent reading assessment measures problems with eye movement, as well as cognitive, motor, social-emotion development and concepts of print.  The information that follows will offer simple remediation efforts to correct delay in the eye movement development. […]