Baby Einstein - the DVD and video line that turned its Centennial founder into a multimillionaire praised by President Bush - may hurt infants' language development, a study released this week has found.

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the University of Washington, the study's team found that for every hour per day that infants watched baby videos and DVDs from such companies as Baby Einstein and Brain Baby, they understood six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them.

"We failed to find any evidence of benefit whatsoever. We found evidence of harm," Christakis said. "If they want to say on the cover that it enriches a child's vocabulary, then I feel that they should actually demonstrate that it does, especially in light of the fact that we found exactly the opposite."

Julie Aigner-Clark, a former Denver-area teacher, founded Baby Einstein after her daughter was born.

Searching for ways to share her love of art and music with her baby, she started by filming children's videos in her Centennial basement.

She grew her business to more than $20 million in sales in just five years, and sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company in 2001. Since then, Baby Einstein has become a $200 million business.

Aigner-Clark sat as a guest of honor with first lady Laura Bush at President Bush's State of the Union address in January.

"Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America," Bush said during his speech.

He also praised her more recent work founding a video series that teaches children to make good choices in potentially dangerous situations.

The study critical of the videos is part of a larger project examining media viewing in the first two years of life. The researchers conducted random interviews with more than 1,000 families in Washington and Minnesota with a child under 2 years old.

Aigner-Clark did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

She told The Denver Post this week that she was a little confounded and frustrated by the new research, which she thought envisioned someone letting their child watch the videos alone.

She said the videos were intended to be watched by parents and children together, to promote interaction.

"You stay with the child and teach them," Aigner-Clark said. ". . . You are looking at the screen with the baby and saying, 'Look at the kitty cat.' It is really about being interactive."

"What can I say?" Christakis said. "That's not actually what happens."

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059