Nov 14, 2014 11:19 AM EST By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Videos starring a favorite Sesame Street character could help preschoolers develop skills critical to school readiness, according to a recent study.

Deborah Linebarger, an associate professor in the University of Iowa's College of Education's Department of Teaching and Learning found that the Cookie Monster could teach four-year-olds self-control. Watching videos of Cookie Monster practicing ways to control his desire to eat a bowl of chocolate chip cookies helped influenced their self-control.

"Me want it," Cookie Monster sings in one video. "But me wait."

The study involved 59 preschool children who were recruited from six child-care centers in and around a small city in the Midwest. Linebarger utilized a new curriculum developed by Sesame Street that features Cookie Monster, which was designed to teach preschoolers executive function skills such as self-control, working memory and switching gears between activities.

The students were first shown one of two five-minute videos: Cookie Monster being taught to listen, remember and control his desire to eat cookies, or Murray being led through a series of clues to figure out where he and Little Lamb were going to visit. After that, the children were given DVDs to view at home for three weeks which followed the same storyline as the first video they watched.

She found that preschoolers who viewed the Cookie Monster video were able to wait four minutes longer than their peers who watched an unrelated Sesame Street video. They were also better able to control the impulse to shout out character names and to remember and repeat back longer number sequences.

"These are the nonacademic skills that help make a child successful at school," Linebarger said in a statement. "They help children manage their behavior, sit still and pay attention."

Linebarger said learning to master these executive functioning skills are critical to school readiness.

"A formal school situation requires that children control impulses, follow directions, transit smoothly between activities, and focus on relevant task information," she added. "These skills also predict other academic skills including reading, math, and science."

Kindergarten teachers report that more than half of children entering school suffer deficits in these areas.

Linebarger presented the findings of her study Nov. 10 during the London International Conference on Education. The results of the study have not yet been published.

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