Watching Spongebob is hazardous to your kids

[kangofu]

SpongeBob in hot water from study of 4-year-olds
Source
- AP News
By LINDSEY TANNER
Posted on Sun, Sep. 11, 2011 11:08 PMThe cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants is in hot water from a study suggesting that watching just nine minutes of that program can cause short-term attention and learning problems in 4-year-olds

Comments

[iolarah]

Hehe, I'd love to send that img to my old stats prof. I bet he'd get a chuckle out of that.

[kangofu]

I've been debating about sending it to my old research professor. I'd bet she'd love it.

[othellia]

For one thing, the kids weren't tested before they watched TV.

Umm... I would think that that'd be a rather import control variable.

So if Spongebob "supposedly" causes memory/attention problems, does that mean Avatar: the Last Airbender might cause SUPER MEMORY?

[maladaptive]

Totally OT... but I love your icon.

[teacup_werewolf]

Can I support this statement?

[zendequervain]

SUPER MEMORY YESSSS.

[keeperofthekeys]

What.

And what about half an hour later? An hour? A day? Who designed this study?

[erunamiryene]

OMG ANYTHING BUT CAILLOU, PLEASE.

what is with all the spongebob hate? First it was "the gay agenda", then it was "global warming" and now he ruins kids' minds? XD

[jeterluva]

People need to leave him alone.

[dark_puck]

Personally I feel it is a really stupid show.

But that is just me and I'm not going to force anyone else to stop watching it.

Not to mention that this study is just FLAWED in so many ways.

[hammersxstrings]

yeah i can't stand it. but i agree, to each their own. it can't be any worse than some of the stuff from when I was a kid

ren&stimpy, CATDOG LOVE

[musique_style]

We just learned about this in Psychology Statistics yesterday. If I were capable of not zoning out for minutes at a time, I'd be able to say exactly what's wrong with that experiment.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong--this'll be good study practice :P

- He didn't randomly select these kids. They're all 4 years old. And yet, he generalized his conclusion to cover kids in general. Can't do that, as far as I know.

- They were all from the same background, which would be fantastic if his hypothesis was "watching Spongebob is bad for white middle and upper class 4 year olds". But, he went ahead and said it was bad for kids in general; he should've randomly selected the kids. Then, he would've had a better chance at getting solid findings; you can't take the results of 60 white middle/upper class 4 year olds, and determine that the same applies to the white kid with ADD, or the lower class children, or the children of color, or children with an illness. NO.

Someone grade me, I wanna see if actually reading the textbook paid off. >_>

[bellonia]

You're right if they're looking for population wide application, that's true. However, limiting variables is also important for preliminary studies. Which, for a study this poorly presented it had better be.

[kangofu]

I was looking for the actual study, just so I could see how fail it was. I doubt it's a double blinded 1b level RCT. The lack of a baseline it the worst part. "Let's just assume they're all the same!" WTF. Research fail.

Personally, I'm ready to dump this down with "expert opinion" i.e. useless.

[lickety_split]

In addition, his sample size is a joke. /says my Psych degree