no statistical correlation between music listening and language development). Here's the kicker: for each hour, on average, that infants between 8 and 16 months old watched infant-directed television (including DVD versions of those programs) per day, they could expect a seventeen point reduction in their scores on the CDI. Let me say that again: each hour per day, on average, that these kids watched TV was associated with a seventeen point decrease on a measure of language acquisition. You might argue that this correlation could exist simply because parents who show these programs to their kids may also be somehow less motivated to encourage language development in their kids more generally. Perhaps these parents were just less skilled at parenting overall. The researchers attempted to statistically control for this, by factoring in data related to parent-child interaction. As usual, correlations should be taken with a grain of salt, and this is but one study from a very large literature. Still, this study, combined with others, has led the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend that children between the ages of 0 and 2 years old watch no television at all. But television isn't all bad. Shows like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood stand out as beacons of hope, sparkling diamonds among a sea of coals. For children between the ages of two and five years, at least. In 2001, Daniel R. Anderson published the results of a massive longitudinal study called "The Recontact Study" as a Monograph of the