Jayde's Media and Human Development Blog

  Colman Noctor, a therapist for the Dunfillan Young Person's Unit in Ireland, wrote an article called Putting Harry Potter on the Couch about using the techniques for personal development taught in the Harry Potter series in therapy. Noctor mentioned that many children relate to stories or fairytales with evil characters. These stories allow them to explore the idea of good vs. bad. When providing group therapy for children, Noctor used the themes in the Harry Potter series to help the children work through some of their struggles.  For example, Noctor taught the children the idea of thinking of their fears as "boggarts". In the books, the wizarding students have to imagine something they find funny to defeat the boggart. Noctor said, "The message here is both reassuring and empowering, suggesting that conquering our most fearsome inner demons is merely a matter of perspective".  Noctor also described conjuring a "patronus", a silvery creature meant ...

If you've ever wondered how infants best learn from media, you're in the right place! There are six ways to increase how much babies learn from technology: synchrony, joint attention, repetition, simplicity, prosodic features of language, and segmentation. By doing any of these methods while using media with your baby, they will have an easier time learning from it.  Synchrony is when a child looks to the caregiver on how to respond. For example, if a caregiver repeats a word said on a television show, a child is likely to mimic that action.  Joint attention means the child and the caregiver both are looking at and interacting with the same thing. An example of this could be an adult and a child pointing to things together while reading a book. Repetition is exactly what it sounds like! It means doing or seeing things over and over again. For example, in a television show, if a word is repeated, the infant will have an easier time learning that word. Simplicity means breaking ...