Challenging the Link Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Later Attention Problems

Challenging the Link Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Later Attention Problems: A Multiverse Approach. Matthew T. McBee, Rebecca J. Brand, Wallace E. Dixon, Jr. Psychological Science, March 25, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620971650

Abstract: In 2004, Christakis and colleagues published an article in which they claimed that early childhood television exposure causes later attention problems, a claim that continues to be frequently promoted by the popular media. Using the same National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data set (N = 2,108), we conducted two multiverse analyses to examine whether the finding reported by Christakis and colleagues was robust to different analytic choices. We evaluated 848 models, including logistic regression models, linear regression models, and two forms of propensity-score analysis. If the claim were true, we would expect most of the justifiable analyses to produce significant results in the predicted direction. However, only 166 models (19.6%) yielded a statistically significant relationship, and most of these employed questionable analytic choices. We concluded that these data do not provide compelling evidence of a harmful effect of TV exposure on attention.

Keywords: media, TV, ADHD, attention development, multiverse analysis, computational reproducibility, garden of forking paths, open data, open materials