I work for a nonprofit that is interested in commissioning (i.e., paying significantly for) a controlled, longitudinal study of the use of “Your Baby Can Read” in daycares & preschools.
The trouble is that it may be difficult to find qualified researchers who are not strongly biased against the very idea of this study.
So I’m asking you if you know of anyone–if you have any leads–who might be qualified to help us with this study. It’s not something I personally am qualified to do. But we’re prepared to pay significantly for this study. While we will have some requirements, we will, of course, expect the researcher(s) to work independently of us, and to get the paper(s) that result published in peer reviewed journals.
If you have any ideas, please reply by private message or on this board.
Actually that may not have been the best link. I’ll try to find one that may be more helpful.
I also know that another nearby school BYU.edu does early learning studies on infants (not YBCR or anything), so they may have some researchers who would be interested in working with you on your project.
Sure, we know that there are many researchers and research institutes that study the general topics of cognitive development, reading, early learning, etc. But the question really is whether anyone (probably due to familiarity with Doman, YBCR, etc.) knows of particular researchers with a special interest in this sort of thing, and who have an open mind. Most researchers in education and psychology are pretty biased against early learning of the Doman sort.
I would love to do the research but I’m not really qualified! The only Ph.D. I know is working in public health for that age group more so than early learning or early education. Good luck finding some one, this is a very interesting area, but like you said most people you run into are going to have a strong bias against YBCR, as a matter of fact they would probably not be willing to make a positive finding if there was one, “career suicide” if you know what I mean. Anyways, if you need additional preschools to work with, I know of one that uses the program.
I have had just ONE person say she has forwarded my message elsewhere. Nobody we’re talking to here seems to know anybody who does this stuff professionally. I’m actually a little shocked at this. We’re a veritable community of amateurs. (I love it!) Well, OK, some people call themselves “professional moms,” but nobody researches this stuff. We’re flying by the seats of our pants…you’d think more education & psychology researchers would take an interest…
I will be starting my uni course this year on Early Childhood education but since i will be an undergrad and have to regurgitate what the uni will want to hear I will be unable to help. Even though I wish I could I would love to do a controlled longitudal study on doman. Show all those ‘educators’ that children are capable of soooooo much more!!
Well I do have a contact that writes the standardized test for schools in Washington DC. I am sure she would know someone. If you PM me I can find out some more info for you.
The AAP recommends no TV for children under 2 becausee of ADD risks. Some have hypothesized that flashing images are the cause of ADD, but to my knowledge there have been no studies on the quality of TV a child is exposed to. I think the key to being credible is showing there is no increased rate in ADD or behavior problems for the children in the study. YBCR is completely diffrent form Doman methods because it has no flashing images and it involves interaction from the child. I’m not sure if this is included in your study, but if it were it may attract more interest.
Well, the AAP also considers Doman’s methods of treating brain damaged kids to be quackery: http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/patterning.html Do you always believe position statements of professional organizations? Then you’ll have to reject Doman’s judgment. Myself, I do not believe, or endorse, position statements of professional organizations uncritically. I think that position statements are rules of thumb at best, made by groups of people with considerable peer pressure and internal politics that never appear in the position statements. This is especially true in such loose, imprecise fields as psychology and education.
And wait–Doman methods, which involve flashing bits to children as quickly as possible, has no flashing images? Of course it does. It flashes images much more quickly than does YBCR, and if I’m not mistaken the speed with which the Doman method flashes images is held to be an advantage of the Doman method over YBCR.
I see no significant difference between quickly flashing cards and certain kinds of videos. After all, suppose we just make a video of flashing cards a la Doman. Is that verboten? I imagine it would be. They would be literally flashing images, on video. Horrors!
The AAP position seems very sensible when it comes to watching large amounts of video (say, over an hour per day), having babies watch videos not actually designed for babies, or using TV as a passive babysitter. Yes, I’d agree that’s inappropriate for little babies. But what about watching 15 minutes of a slow-paced video created especially for babies–like YBCR–with their sensibilities and attention span? Did the studies the AAP rely upon make use of such videos? I doubt it.
Anyway, the money is there not to test Doman’s methods–as truly interesting as I would find that, and would like to do that–but to test YBCR. That is the program we’re actually using, like it or not. And, by the way, the program is being used in preschools & daycares, so I suspect most children who see them will be over two.
Wow, I just reread my previous post and I was all over the place. My kids have been sick for 2 1/2 weeks now and I am very short on sleep. This post may also be confusing, I’m going on 2 hours sleep last night.
I wasn’t talking about my beliefs; I wasn’t even talking about myself. What I was attempting to do was point out that the researchers you are trying to recruit have certain biases and preconceptions. Maybe if you consider this, you can use their beliefs to put some kind of spin on your proposal that would hook a qualified researcher.
Hopefully this makes more sense of my previous post. I have to go now but if it is still confusing and you care to go into it I can post more later.
I hope you find your researcher, and wish you the best. I’m also thrilled that someone is attempting this study.
Yes, the U.S. (or Canada)–at this point we don’t care what part. It would probably be difficult to arrange for researchers to come from farther abroad, and work with them.
Yup, we are all amateurs and in general it is the amateurs who get their children reading young.
What exactly is the study looking at and would the researcher have to draw up the study objectives him/herself? What exactly do the people who are paying for this study want to know - whether children can learn to read at that age? How far their reading goes if shown only the videos as directed? What happens after the videos since they do not teach all reading? Is it supposed to be a short term study or a lengthy one which follows the children into school age? Will they be testing vocabulary like the tests on the einstein video (as any video shown too often will limit vocabulary purely because speaking to a child a lot and hearing different vocabulary will increase it more than a repetitive video) Is it going to be a study based on percentages and will the children then be tested as testing is not supposed to happen with Doman and I don’t think even YBCR and if you cannot test then what parameters will be used to evaluate the success/failure?
How will the children be treated at home - what happens if the parents use the product more at home or do additional teaching?
Doman himself did some research when he wrote his book and stated that every child he found whose parents had tried to teach their baby to read had succeeded no matter what method they used - obviously since the money is only for YBCR this will not be a comparative study but surely there must be a control group also - will these be children in other schools or in the same school who are not shown the videos - again how do you evaluate then?