The same patterns of results are also reported in studies on young children television viewing and cognitive
development. In two studies reviewed by Anderson & Pempek (2005), Wachs (1986) found that background noise from
the television is associated with poorer cognitive development on infants and toddlers. Carew (1980) in his longitudinal
study on the impact of six “intellectual sources” on spatial and language skills related to intelligence, his results were
consistent with the hypothesis that television had a negative impact on cognitive development during the first 2 years of
life but the impact became positive for children 24 months old and older. This is probably because very young children
are sensitive to the sequential and linguistic comprehensibility of video to at least 18 months of age (Anderson &
Pempek, 2005), and also that very young children have difficulty using a symbolic representation as a source of
information about an existing situation (Troseth, & DeLoache, 1998) which explains that they are most likely not
developmentally ready to receive information or learn from the television.