Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Kids say 'yum' to Mickey D's If you don't believe that brands can influence children, just try driving by a McDonald's with an 2-year-old in the car. Even if children don't have the words to verbalize their adoration, I'm willing to bet that they will point and wave in excitement. So it isn't a big surprise to hear that when 63 preschoolers were asked to take a taste test, they showed a significant preference for the taste of the food from McDonald's -- even when given exactly the same food in unbranded packaging. These are the results from a study led by Thomas N. Robinson, a pediatrician at Stanford, that were released last week in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.   What I found interesting was how TV played into the results. The more television sets in a child's house, the more the children pointed to McDonald's food when asked what tasted "best."  [Please note: These blog entries will soon be integrated into my new Web site -- www.lisaguernsey.com -- where you can subscribe to my newsletter. Take a look!] 5:18:04 PM    comment []

Disney versus U-W Disney isn't happy about the latest research out of the University of Washington. Here's a blog post from DaddyTypes and a quick link on Working Dad about the Walt Disney Company asking the University of Washington to retract its news release about the study. At issue is whether the new release was fair in describing the U-W study. They don't like Baby Einstein videos being singled out in a catch-all category of "baby videos." And they stress that the research was based on a one-time survey, not a controlled trial that can get at questions of cause-and-effect. Fair points. But it's also worth noting that there isn't solid research out there to show any benefit from Baby Einstein videos either. On the other hand, there is some preliminary research showing positve effects of a baby video of an entirely different design: Sesame Beginnings. Yet-to-be-published research from the University of Massachusetts showed that Sesame Beginnings -- with its emphasis on singing and talking to babies -- caused an uptick in parent-child interaction when the video was off. For more, see my blog post from the Society for Research in Child Development meeting in March. 4:23:44 PM    comment []

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