SpongeBob SquarePants probably doesn’t need any more defending. Since his drubbing in the medical journal Pediatrics on Monday, plenty of fans have stood up for him, testifying to his messy, merry appeal.
But his viewers, and their parents, could probably use some support, too, or at least reassurance that there’s no need to walk out on Bikini Bottom just yet.
The new rap against Mr. SquarePants (he’s also been slammed for exalting junk food and accused of promoting homosexuality) comes from a study by psychologists at the University of Virginia, which claims to have found evidence that the TV show moves too fast for little kids, and thus erodes their ability to pay attention. Too-fast pacing is a familiar complaint about children’s TV, dating to the 1970s. Until now it has not stood up to scientific scrutiny, and there is good reason to think the new study won’t either.
The researchers found that a group of 20 4-year-olds who watched the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” for just nine minutes performed significantly worse on tests of “executive function” than did like-sized groups of 4-year-olds who either watched the animated show “Caillou,” a relatively sedate program, or played with paper, crayons and markers for nine minutes.
(In the Pediatrics article, the two programs aren’t named, but are referred to, revealingly, as “a very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea” and “a realistic Public Broadcasting Service cartoon about a typical U.S. preschool-aged boy.”)
The “SpongeBob” clip had scene changes every 11 seconds, on average, while the “Caillou” segment had them only every 34 seconds.
After viewing the clips, or coloring pictures, the children were given four tests. They were instructed, for example, to touch their heads and toes, and to repeat strings of numbers in reverse order.
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