The Sesame Street effect

"Count von Count, Sesame Street's friendly mathematical vampire, is obsessed with a new number: 0.29," says Dr. Charlotte Cole, Senior Vice President of Global Education at Sesame Workshop. She was responding to a new article in theJournal of Applied Developmental Psychology which found that the effects of exposure to Sesame Street are significant and positive, with an effect size of 0.292. The authors conducted a meta-analysis examining the effects of children's exposure to international co-productions of Sesame Street, synthesizing the results of 24 studies, conducted with over 10,000 children in 15 countries. The results indicated significant positive effects of watching the program, aggregated across learning outcomes, and within three outcome categories: cognitive outcomes, including literacy and numeracy; learning about the world, including health and safety knowledge; and social reasoning and respect for others. 

Johns Hopkins University

School of Education

Center for Research and Reform in Education

Research in Brief