TITZER, SLU PROFESSOR CREATES VIDEO TO TEACH BABIES TO READ

HAMMOND, LA -- For many parents it is an exciting time when their youngster learns to read. Many parents would like their children to learn to read sooner. How about as early as nine months old? Yes, it is possible your baby can read, thanks to the research of Southeastern Louisiana University professor Dr. Robert Titzer.

"If 40% of eight year olds in the United States can't read independently, that's a national crisis," said Titzer. "It indicates that children should start to learn earlier and the current methods are not working for everyone." The assistant professor of Kinesiology and Health Studies, at Southeastern in Hammond, La., has a new method that could change the way children learn to read.

Titzer, an assistant professor of Kinesiology and Health Studies,at Southeastern in Hammond, LA, has found a way to teach infants to read and has produced a video on the subject for parents to use at home.

Titzer says he learned about the possibility of teaching reading to young children from his first child, Aleka.

Like every excited first-time parent, he wanted to stimulate his child. "I wanted to play stimulating games with my first daughter that would motivate and encourage her and at the same time I was taking infant development classes, so I tried a lot of the activities I saw in the classes. I made up many new activities for us to do, one of which was reading, which I think is probably the most important activity a parent can do with a baby. Reading opens up the door for learning anything."

Titzer didn't realize just how stimulating these activities were until several months later. "I was just playing around with words,not having any idea my daughter was learning the words. I did this because she enjoyed it. I started when she was three months old and when she was7 and a half months old I noticed that she actually recognized the words. I did it for four months not actually knowing that she was learning any of the words.

"My wife and I made a video for my daughter to watch while she was with the babysitter. We did it in part because we wanted her to see us when we were gone. She enjoyed it; she watched the video a lot. She would often laugh and giggle when she saw it.

"So we weren't just drilling her with words. If we showed a word, we would show it for a second and then do whatever the word was. If the word was a toy, we'd play with some toy, if the word was piano,then we'd go bang on the piano. It was never just 'Here look at this word'. It was always something fun and when we did words it was a lot of words she was interested in and enjoyed."

Using that experience along with his formal research in the areas of infant learning and multi-sensory learning, Titzer has compiled a video for kids and parents to help teach reading. He is now marketing this video through his company, The Infant Learning Company. The web site, www.infantlearning.com, also has links to the latest research on infants, children organizations and resources.

Using words such as clap, standing and smiling, Titzer's video,"Your Baby Can Read!" shows the child a word while the announcer says the word. Then the children in the video perform the word. The words range from body parts (eyes, ears, nose), to actions (arms up, jumping),to animals.

Based on research on how infants learn, Titzer insisted that the video have certain elements. For instance, the background colors are varied, there are variations in the fonts used and the placement of the words on the screen.

"It's absolutely critical that the order of the words changes in the video, otherwise they just learn the order of the words and not the words. If you put them in two different orders that makes a huge difference in how much they learn." Titzer says a lot of studies have shown that infants remember order. "That's why we also changed some of the words slightly the second time they're shown, and by doing that it helps them to generalize."

"We want them learning through all the different sensory modalities. So they'll look at the word, hear the word, say the word. In the video very often it says 'can you say' and it says that enough times that most children will repeat the words even when it doesn't say to do so. They also do some physical action (arms up, clap), so they're using several sensory modalities while they're learning the word."

According to Titzer, the idea of using a multi-sensory method to learn is based on the latest theory of brain development that says if you learn through more than one sense at a time then you will have more detailed learning, especially if this sensory learning occurs during the initial learning.

An example of a word used in the video is Orangutan. "This is the first time many of the children have ever heard the word. They're hearing it for the very first time and also seeing the word and the orangutan itself at the same time they're hearing it, so they should have a very elaborate idea of what an orangutan is."

The video has received good responses from both children and parents, Titzer said. "Hundreds of kids have watched it and we've received positive results. Even with very young babies, as young as three months old, we get reports from parents that every time the word 'clap' comes on the video, they try to clap. Babies watch the video because they get to participate. Of course there are times when a baby will be distracted from watching, especially when they first learn to walk or crawl.

"We've also gone to daycare centers and shown this video. I showed this at my daughter's school where I was a guest speaker for career week for a group of six to nine year olds. They enjoyed it very much. It was also shown in my younger daughter's class, the two to five year old group. The teacher said they just loved it. The kids were all clapping and waving and doing the actions.

Titzer is quick to point out that this video is not a miracle teacher. "I would hate for people to think that if they watch the video their child will be able to do everything instantly. This is just one activity parents can do with their children. They should also be reading to their kids and doing other stimulating activities."

"Infants learn language extremely fast. After they know about 50 words, then they learn words very quickly.

"Watching this video will only teach them to read the words that are in the video, however if infants learn enough words, for instance from several different videos, then they could pick up the patterns of the language and could learn to read words they've never seen before. They may see the words cat and bat and house and horse and from that they then may figure out the word hat. They'll realize the "h" sound and they can figure this out without being told."

Titzer also notes that infants need to watch the video quite a few times before they'll participate, depending on how ready they are. "Two to 5 year olds participate a lot. Two year olds need to watch it a few times before they join in, but the older kids usually start participating the first time they watch.

"The end result is that they're going to be able to read more efficiently and they're going to have more efficient language skills. Learning early is building the ability to learn, they're learning how to learn by watching the video."

Titzer is now working on a book on infant stimulation and other stimulating activities parents can do with their infants and also creating new videos.

He has performed studies on infants and transparency which he has applied to how infants generalize and how infants learn, and he is doing research on infant's reaching. These are both very popular research topics among those in his field, however, as far as he knows, there are no published studies on infant reading. Titzer plans to present his findings at the International Conference on Infant Studies next spring in Atlanta.

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