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Children’s Use of Self-Paced Slideshows: An Extension of the Video Deficit Effect?
Journal of Research In Childhood Education
Abstract
Past research has established that children typically learn better from live demonstrations than from two-dimensional (2D) media. In the present set of experiments, we investigated the efficacy of a new 2D learning medium—the self-paced slideshow. A primary goal was to determine whether the “video deficit effect” extended to self-paced slideshows. In Experiment 1, preschool-age children saw demonstrations of novel events either live, on video, or by advancing through self-paced slideshows. They were then tested on their performance and verbal memory. In line with past work, children in the live condition outperformed those in the video and slideshow conditions at reproducing the target actions. To further explore the 2D media, Experiment 2 directly compared learning from self-paced slideshows to that from videos. Changes to the stimuli included a more natural extraction rate of slides and a higher focus on the objects. Children’s performance differed little between conditions, with the exception of reproducing fewer actions in the slideshow than video condition on two (of four) toys. Ultimately, we conclude that the video deficit extends to self-paced slideshows. Future work must investigate how to enhance children’s learning from 2D sources, given their increasing role in daily life.
... A 1 fps rate of extraction necessarily results in less information than streaming video format (in which individual frames are also presented, but at a denser rate, frequently 30 fps). However, children process these slideshows similarly to videos of the same activity (Sage & Baldwin, 2015), presumably because the dwell-time-paradigm enables viewers to move quickly enough through slides to gain a sense of apparent motion. ...
... Some initial evidence indicates that children also display boundary advantages in dwell-time patterns when viewing relatively familiar activity sequences (Meyer et al., 2011;Ross & Baldwin, 2015)-suggesting that they, like adults, proactively sample information at goalrelated segment boundaries. However, another study failed to find these key patterns in preschoolers' dwell times (Sage & Baldwin, 2015), engendering some uncertainty about the nature of preschoolers' event processing, and about the usefulness of the dwell-time paradigm for investigating children's event segmentation. The present research was thus also designed to provide additional information about the replicability of prior findings and the value of the dwell-time paradigm for this purpose. ...
Using Hard et al.’s (2011) dwell‐time paradigm, 85 preschoolers (aged 2.5–4.5; 43 female; primarily from white families) advanced at their own pace through one of three slideshows. All slideshows depicted an actor reaching toward, grasping, and retrieving a ball. However, motion patterns differed for one slideshow (straight‐reach) relative to the other two (arcing‐reaches), and one of the arcing‐reach slideshows depicted a violation of typical goal‐related motion. Preschoolers’ knowledge of goal structure systematically modulated attention to event boundaries across slideshows despite surface differences, even when controlling for pixel change (an index of changes in motion). These findings showcase the value of the dwell time paradigm, and illuminate how children deploy attention as goal‐related expectations shape their analysis of continuously unfolding activity.
... Because of the video deficit effect, children's learning performance after watching an instructional video may be negatively influenced by the lack of a social component (Sims & Colunga, 2013;Strouse et al., 2018). Indeed, the video deficit effect might be one of the reasons that video interventions in vocabulary teaching have not been that successful (Sage & Baldwin, 2015;Strouse et al., 2018). ...
... Three-year-old children also learn better from a video when they have a live dialogic interaction than just with a dialogic actress who is shown in the video (Strouse et al., 2013). Such an effect in preschool children seems to extend also to other 2D media, as a similar deficit effect was found when giving self-paced slideshows (slides that the children went through at their own pace by choosing themselves when to advance the slides) to them (Sage and Baldwin, 2015). ...
L’apprentissage social est une capacité importante pour l’adaptation des individus à leur environnement. Pour assurer l’apprentissage d’informations fiables, les individus doivent savoir sélectionner un bon démonstrateur. La littérature montre que les apprenants utilisent différents critères sociaux pour sélectionner un bon modèle (comme l’âge, le sexe ou la familiarité), et qu’ils ont tendance à apprendre plus de ceux qui appartiennent au même groupe social qu’eux. Cependant, il y a encore peu de connaissances à l’heure actuelle sur le rôle que joue l’espèce du démonstrateur dans la catégorisation et l’apprentissage social, ce qui va être l’intérêt de notre étude. Nous avons cherché à tester le rôle de l’espèce du modèle dans ce contexte, et ce en comparant l’apprentissage interspécifique de deux modèles : le modèle humain (enfants de 4 ans et adultes) et le modèle oiseau (calopsittes élégantes). Nous avons pour cela utilisé l’exclusivité mutuelle, qui est la tendance à attribuer une fonction unique à un outil, comme outil méthodologique pour étudier l’apprentissage, ainsi que des démonstrations de modèles humain, oiseau ou chien par support vidéo pour montrer la fonction de différents outils. Les résultats ont montré de l’exclusivité mutuelle chez les enfants de 4 ans lorsqu’ils regardaient des démonstrations en live, répliquant ainsi l’étude Peto et al. (2018). Les enfants ayant visionné des démonstrations par vidéo n’ont pas montré ce phénomène, et il en est de même pour les humains adultes et les calopsittes. Cette étude a ainsi permis de confirmer les résultats de l’étude de Peto et al. (2018), et a de plus apporté des connaissances méthodologiques sur l’exclusivité mutuelle et l’apprentissage interspécifique chez des modèles humains et oiseaux.
... Many authors agree that the video deficit is present in children between the ages of 12 and 21 months. Most commonly, authors writing about the video deficit have chosen children's third birthday as a reference point for when the video deficit is resolved or dramatically reduced for many tasks (Calvert & Richards, 2014;Kirkorian, Wartella, & Anderson, 2008;Roseberry et al., 2014;Sage & Baldwin, 2015), although earlier (Calvert & Wartella, 2014;Uhls, Michikyan, Morris, & Garcia, 2014) and later (Barr, 2010;Moser et al., 2015) estimates have also been used. These estimates have sometimes been based on developmental studies showing the video deficit for a particular task is reduced in older age groups (e.g., Dickerson, Gerhardstein, Zack, & Barr, 2012;Schmitt & Anderson, 2002). ...
Young children often learn less from video than face‐to‐face presentations. Meta‐regression models were used to examine the average size of this difference (video deficit) and investigate moderators. An average deficit of about half of a standard deviation was reported across 122 independent effect sizes from 59 reports, involving children ages 0–6 years. Moderator analyses suggested (a) the deficit decreased with age, (b) object retrieval studies showed larger deficits than other domains, and (c) there was no difference between studies using live versus prerecorded video. Results are consistent with a multiple‐mechanism explanation for the deficit. However, the analyses highlighted potential quality and publication bias issues that may have resulted in overestimation of the effect and should be addressed by future researchers.
... While relatively little published research has made use of novel tablet-based tasks, there is an extensive literature that has used lab-based touch-screen paradigms with children (e.g., Friend & Keplinger, 2003;Holloway & Ansari, 2008;Sage & Baldwin, 2015). This prior literature is important for calibrating our expectations about what paradigms may be ported successfully to tablets, but if anything, it is likely to underestimate the utility of tablets. ...
Mobile, touch-screen devices are increasingly ubiquitous in children’s lives. The extensive use of such devices presents an exciting opportunity for data collection. We describe a simple method for creating cross-platform, interactive tablet experiments using open Web-based resources. We illustrate this method by collecting data from 1- to 4-year-old children in a word-recognition paradigm, using 3 different techniques: tablets, eye tracking, and an in-person storybook paradigm. Both accuracy and reaction-time data from the tablet compared favorably with the other methods. Tablets should be considered as a viable method for collecting low-cost, well-controlled developmental data.
Facebook is a major part of the lives of many consumers who share a considerable amount of information with friends, acquaintances, and commercial interests via the platform, leading to greater exposure to privacy risks. Training has been shown to be effective in reducing computer risk in a variety of contexts. This study investigates the effectiveness of training on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward Facebook privacy risk. The study highlights the importance of training consumers on how and why they need to protect their privacy. Findings suggest that training can reduce consumer risk, but effectiveness can vary across types of training. For example, Facebook’s Privacy Tour was less effective than third party training videos in improving consumer vigilance. Implications of the findings for consumers and privacy advocates are discussed.
Facebook is a major part of the lives of many consumers who share a considerable amount of information with friends, acquaintances, and commercial interests via the platform, leading to greater exposure to privacy risks. Training has been shown to be effective in reducing computer risk in a variety of contexts. This study investigates the effectiveness of training on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward Facebook privacy risk. The study highlights the importance of training consumers on how and why they need to protect their privacy. Findings suggest that training can reduce consumer risk, but effectiveness can vary across types of training. For example, Facebook's Privacy Tour was less effective than third party training videos in improving consumer vigilance. Implications of the findings for consumers and privacy advocates are discussed.
Facebook is a major part of the lives of many consumers who share a considerable amount of information with friends, acquaintances, and commercial interests via the platform, leading to greater exposure to privacy risks. Training has been shown to be effective in reducing computer risk in a variety of contexts. This study investigates the effectiveness of training on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward Facebook privacy risk. The study highlights the importance of training consumers on how and why they need to protect their privacy. Findings suggest that training can reduce consumer risk, but effectiveness can vary across types of training. For example, Facebook’s Privacy Tour was less effective than third-party training videos in improving consumer vigilance. Implications of the findings for consumers and privacy advocates are discussed.
In 2 experiments, students received 2 presentations of a narrated animation that explained how lightning forms followed by retention and transfer tests. In Experiment 1, learners who were allowed to exercise control over the pace of the narrated animation before a second presentation of the same material at normal speed (part–whole presentation) performed better on transfer but not retention tests compared with learners who received the same 2 presentations in the reverse order (whole–part presentation). In Experiment 2, learners who were allowed to exercise control over the pace of the narrated animation across 2 presentations (part–part presentation) performed better on transfer but not retention tests compared with learners who received the same 2 presentations at normal speed without any learner control (whole–whole presentation). These results are consistent with cognitive load theory and a 2-stage theory of mental model construction.
How do people understand the everyday, yet intricate, behaviors that unfold around them? In the present research, we explored this by presenting viewers with self-paced slideshows of everyday activities and recording looking times, subjective segmentation (breakpoints) into action units, and slide-to-slide physical change. A detailed comparison of the joint time courses of these variables showed that looking time and physical change were locally maximal at breakpoints and greater for higher level action units than for lower level units. Even when slideshows were scrambled, breakpoints were regarded longer and were more physically different from ordinary moments, showing that breakpoints are distinct even out of context. Breakpoints are bridges: from one action to another, from one level to another, and from perception to conception.
Children's theory of mind (ToM) is typically measured with laboratory assessments of performance. Although these measures have generated a wealth of informative data concerning developmental progressions in ToM, they may be less useful as the sole source of information about individual differences in ToM and their relation to other facets of development. In the current research, we aimed to expand the repertoire of methods available for measuring ToM by developing and validating a parent-report ToM measure: the Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS). We present 3 studies assessing the psychometric properties of the CSUS. Study 1 describes item analysis, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and relation of the scale to children's performance on laboratory ToM tasks. Study 2 presents cross-validation data for the scale in a different sample of preschool children with a different set of ToM tasks. Study 3 presents further validation data for the scale with a slightly older age group and a more advanced ToM task, while controlling for several other relevant cognitive abilities. The findings indicate that the CSUS is a reliable and valid measure of individual differences in children's ToM that may be of great value as a complement to standard ToM tasks in many different research contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
This article examines a study in which young children were exposed to a computer story that varied the amount of control that children had over the visual and verbal content. Children who controlled the computer demonstrated more attention and involvement than those who watched an adult control the experience. Boys who had an adult control the program were more likely to try to gain control of the activity by making attempts to get the mouse or by asking to change activities. Control, however, had no effect on children’s memory of visual or verbal content. The implication is that control is an engagement feature that has its greatest impact when examining attention and interest, a lesson that may facilitate constructive early adult-child interactions with educational computer software.
How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to
identify with
and
imitate
conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the
selective interpretive nature of imitative learning
in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner.
Interactive video in an e-learning system allows proactive and random access to video content. Our empirical study examined the influence of interactive video on learning outcome and learner satisfaction in e-learning environments. Four different settings were studied: three were e-learning environments—with interactive video, with non-interactive video, and without video. The fourth was the traditional classroom environment. Results of the experiment showed that the value of video for learning effectiveness was contingent upon the provision of interactivity. Students in the e-learning environment that provided interactive video achieved significantly better learning performance and a higher level of learner satisfaction than those in other settings. However, students who used the e-learning environment that provided non-interactive video did not improve either. The findings suggest that it may be important to integrate interactive instructional video into e-learning systems.
In 2 experiments, students received 2 presentations of a narrated animation that explained how lightning forms followed by retention and transfer tests. In Experiment 1, learners who were allowed to exercise control over the pace of the narrated animation before a second presentation of the same material at normal speed (part–whole presentation) performed better on transfer but not retention tests compared with learners who received the same 2 presentations in the reverse order (whole–part presentation). In Experiment 2, learners who were allowed to exercise control over the pace of the narrated animation across 2 presentations (part–part presentation) performed better on transfer but not retention tests compared with learners who received the same 2 presentations at normal speed without any learner control (whole–whole presentation). These results are consistent with cognitive load theory and a 2-stage theory of mental model construction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In recent years, parents in the United States and worldwide have purchased enormous numbers of videos and DVDs designed and marketed for infants, many assuming that their children would benefit from watching them. We examined how many new words 12- to 18-month-old children learned from viewing a popular DVD several times a week for 4 weeks at home. The most important result was that children who viewed the DVD did not learn any more words from their monthlong exposure to it than did a control group. The highest level of learning occurred in a no-video condition in which parents tried to teach their children the same target words during everyday activities. Another important result was that parents who liked the DVD tended to overestimate how much their children had learned from it. We conclude that infants learn relatively little from infant media and that their parents sometimes overestimate what they do learn.
The ability to transfer learning across contexts is an adaptive skill that develops rapidly during early childhood. Learning from television is a specific instance of transfer of learning between a 2-Dimensional (2D) representation and a 3-Dimensional (3D) object. Understanding the conditions under which young children might accomplish this particular kind of transfer is important because by 2 years of age 90% of US children are viewing television on a daily basis. Recent research shows that children can imitate actions presented on television using the corresponding real-world objects, but this same research also shows that children learn less from television than they do from live demonstrations until they are at least 3 years old; termed the video deficit effect. At present, there is no coherent theory to account for the video deficit effect; how learning is disrupted by this change in context is poorly understood. The aims of the present review are (1) to review the conditions under which children transfer learning between 2D images and 3D objects during early childhood, and (2) to integrate developmental theories of memory processing into the transfer of learning from media literature using Hayne's (2004) developmental representational flexibility account. The review will conclude that studies on the transfer of learning between 2D and 3D sources have important theoretical implications for general developmental theories of cognitive development, and in particular the development of a flexible representational system, as well as policy implications for early education regarding the potential use and limitations of media as effective teaching tools during early childhood.
We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals. Such a communication system, which we call 'natural pedagogy', enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque cultural knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on purely observational learning mechanisms alone. We argue that human infants are prepared to be at the receptive side of natural pedagogy (i) by being sensitive to ostensive signals that indicate that they are being addressed by communication, (ii) by developing referential expectations in ostensive contexts and (iii) by being biased to interpret ostensive-referential communication as conveying information that is kind-relevant and generalizable.
Imitation of people on educational television is a potential way for very young children to learn new skills. Although toddlers in previous studies exhibited a "video deficit" in learning, 24-month-olds in Study 1 successfully reproduced behaviors modeled by a person who was on video as well as they did those modeled by a person who was present in the room (even after a 24-h delay). Neither displaced filming context nor cuts between actions affected toddlers' imitation from video. Shortening the demonstration in Study 2 affected imitation in the video condition but not in the live condition. In Study 3, 24-month-olds who viewed the original longer videos on their family TV screens (with which they had a viewing history) imitated significantly less than those who viewed the videos on the laboratory monitor. Imitation of a live modeler was the same across settings (home or lab). Implications for toddlers' judgments of reliable information sources and for the design of educational television programs are discussed.
One hundred and sixty children 3 1/2-7 years of age (10 M, 10 F at each 6-month interval) were tested on a task that requires inhibitory control of action plus learning and remembering two rules. They were asked to say "day" whenever a black card with the moon and stars appeared and to say "night" when shown a white card with a bright sun. Children < 5 years had great difficulty. They started out performing well, but could not sustain this over the course of the 16-trial session. Response latency decreased from 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years. Children < 4 1/2 years performed well when they took very long to respond. To test whether the requirement to learn and remember two rules alone was sufficient to cause children difficulty, 80 children 3 1/2-5 years old were tested on a control version of the task ("say 'day' to one abstract design and 'night' to another"). Even the youngest children performed at a high level. We conclude that the requirement to learn and remember two rules is not in itself sufficient to account for the poor performance of the younger children in the experimental condition.
Learning to use symbols is a challenge for young children even when the symbol in question (e.g., a live video image) is iconic and seems transparent to adults. This research examined the effect of experience on children's use of video-presented information. Two-year-old children saw themselves "live" on their family television for 2 weeks and then participated in an object-retrieval task. The children reliably used a live video presentation of an adult hiding a toy in an adjoining room to find the toy. Most also transferred what they learned to a task involving another symbol (pictures) that typically is very difficult for this age group. The results reveal flexibility in 2-year-olds' symbol use that follows from successful representation of a symbolic relation.
Infants acquire language with remarkable speed, although little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the acquisition process. Studies of the phonetic units of language have shown that early in life, infants are capable of discerning differences among the phonetic units of all languages, including native- and foreign-language sounds. Between 6 and 12 mo of age, the ability to discriminate foreign-language phonetic units sharply declines. In two studies, we investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions for reversing this decline in foreign-language phonetic perception. In Experiment 1, 9-mo-old American infants were exposed to native Mandarin Chinese speakers in 12 laboratory sessions. A control group also participated in 12 language sessions but heard only English. Subsequent tests of Mandarin speech perception demonstrated that exposure to Mandarin reversed the decline seen in the English control group. In Experiment 2, infants were exposed to the same foreign-language speakers and materials via audiovisual or audio-only recordings. The results demonstrated that exposure to recorded Mandarin, without interpersonal interaction, had no effect. Between 9 and 10 mo of age, infants show phonetic learning from live, but not prerecorded, exposure to a foreign language, suggesting a learning process that does not require long-term listening and is enhanced by social interaction.
Using data from 468 parents and taking into account internal consistency, breadth of item content, within-scale factor analysis, and patterns of missing data, we developed short (94 items, 15 scales) and very short (36 items, 3 broad scales) forms of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001), a well-established parent-report measure of temperament for children aged 3 to 8 years. We subsequently evaluated the forms with data from 1,189 participants. In mid/high-income and White samples, the CBQ short and very short forms demonstrated both satisfactory internal consistency and criterion validity, and exhibited longitudinal stability and cross-informant agreement comparable to that of the standard CBQ. Internal consistency was somewhat lower among African American and low-income samples for some scales. Very short form scales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency for all samples, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated marginal fit of the very short form items to a three-factor model.
The results of these studies indicated that children younger than 1 year possess the cognitive capability of translating a perception of a novel action into their own behavior. However, the likelihood of imitation varied as a function of the nature of the target behavior. For example, actions requiring direct social commerce with the examiner were imitated less frequently than simple motor behaviors with objects, and reproducing gestures was more common than vocalizations. Moreover, imitation seemed to depend upon the child's level of mental development-the imitation of coordinated sequences, which requires the child to associate two external events, lagged behind the imitation of single-unit behaviors. There was no evidence for individual traits of general imitativeness, at least not until symbolic relations were involved. Live models were imitated more than TV models but only prior to age 3. While children under 2 years of age were not facile at imitating sequences of behaviors or delaying performance a short time after modeling, older toddlers readily and accurately imitated televised sequences even after a 24-hour delay. Whereas socially extroverted and fearless children imitated live models more than shy children, TV imitation was not related to temperament, home TV viewing habits, or parental education. Finally, the experience of being imitated may facilitate the social cognition of influencing another person.
Despite the plethora of new electronic media aimed at very young children, little is known about which media are available to children and whether or how children engage with them. This study reports on a nationally representative telephone survey of more than 1,000 parents of children ages 6 months through 6 years, conducted in Spring 2003. The most significant findings cited in the study are as follows: (1) children six and under spend an average of 2 hours daily with screen media, mostly TV and videos; (2) TV watching begins at very early ages, well before the medical community recommends; (3) a high proportion of very young children are using new digital media, including 50 percent of 4- to 6-year-olds who have played video games and 70 percent who have used computers; (4) two out of three 6-year-olds and under live in homes where the TV is left on at least half the time, even without viewers present, and one-third live in homes where the TV is on "almost all" or "most" of the time-- children in the latter group appear to read less than other children and to be slower to learn to read; (5) many parents see media as an important educational tool, beneficial to their children's intellectual development, and parents' attitudes on this issue appear to be related to the amount of time their children spend using each medium; and (6) parents clearly perceive that their children's TV watching has a direct effect on their behavior, and are more likely to see positive rather than negative behaviors being copied. (KB)
This statement describes the possible negative health effects of television viewing on children and adolescents, such as violent or aggressive behavior, substance use, sexual activity, obesity, poor body image, and decreased school performance. In addition to the television ratings system and the v-chip (electronic device to block programming), media education is an effective approach to mitigating these potential problems. The American Academy of Pediatrics offers a list of recommendations on this issue for pediatricians and for parents, the federal government, and the entertainment industry.
We investigated infants' response to pedagogy in the domain of tool use. In experiment 1, infants viewed a causally relevant tool-use demonstration presented identically in either a social/pedagogical or social/non-pedagogical context. Infants exposed to pedagogical cues displayed superior production of the tool-use sequence. This was so despite infants displaying equivalent attention to the demonstration across conditions. In contrast, pedagogical cues had no systematic impact on infants' discrimination between causally possible vs. impossible tool-use sequences in a looking-time task. Interestingly, however, older infants across both conditions displayed a preference for looking toward the causally possible display. Experiment 2 documented that social cues of any sort (regardless of pedagogy) accompanying the demonstration triggered older infants to discriminate the causally possible vs. impossible events whereas a non-social demonstration did not. Together, the two experiments implicate ‘social gating’ as well as a pedagogical stance in infants' processing and execution of causal action.
Infants’ imitation of complex actions was examined in three experiments with 24- and 30-month-olds. In all experiments, an adult modeled a series of actions with novel stimuli and the infant's reproduction of those actions was assessed either immediately or after a 24-hour delay. Some infants watched the demonstration live, while other infants watched the same demonstration on television from a pre-recorded videotape. Both 24- and 30-month-olds imitated actions that had been modeled on television; however, their performance was consistently inferior to that of infants of the same age who watched the demonstration live.
In order to investigate the influence of learner-controlled pacing in educational animation on instructional efficiency, three versions of an audio-visual computer animation and a narration-only presentation were used to teach primary school students the determinants of day and night. The animations were either system-paced using a continuous animation, learner-paced using discrete segments or learner paced using ‘stop’ and ‘play’ buttons. The two learner-paced groups showed higher test performance with relatively lower cognitive load compared to the two system-paced groups, despite the fact that the ‘stop’ and ‘play’ buttons were rarely used. The significant group differences regarding test performance were obtained only for more difficult, high element interactivity questions but not for low element interactivity questions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ABSTRACT—The debate about the potential of television and video material to enhance or diminish cognitive development in infants and toddlers has been complicated by speculation regarding the relation between early exposure to these media and the developing brain. Those on both sides of the debate draw on findings from developmental and neuroscience literatures to make explicit or implicit arguments that video experience during the first 2 or 3 years can have a unique and powerful impact on learning that cannot be readily duplicated or undone outside this sensitive period of development. This article tries to put such speculation into perspective by considering it within the framework of W. T. Greenough, J. T. Black, and C. S. Wallace’s (1987) distinction between experience-expectant and experience-dependent plasticity. Data from infant-learning and attention research are used to illustrate how this distinction illuminates both sides of the debate.
When facing the unknown, humans tend to consult others for guidance. This propensity to treat others as information sources has wide-ranging implications, being in part responsible for the breadth and depth of our world knowledge. As yet, little is known concerning when and how young children acquire this important skill. Social referencing and communicative abilities in infancy have been interpreted by many as reflecting precocious social information-seeking ability, but the evidence is far from compelling and equally compatible with an attachment regulation interpretation. While the evidence indicates that infants as young as 12 months are good consumers of social information, it falls well short of demonstrating that they are active seekers of that information. Moreover, genuine social information seeking requires an implicit conception of the knowledge-ignorance distinction, and existing research on children's theories of mind suggests that such a conception is most likely not available in infancy. For these reasons, we argue for a developmental account of social information-gathering ability, one that is consistent with the larger body of evidence concerning sociocognitive abilities in infants and young children.
The effects of systematically varied interactivity on learning from interactive video were studied. A total of 98 high-school
students served as subjects. Four increasingly interactive versions of instruction were used. After receiving the instruction,
students took a 23-item recall test. Recall was significantly affected by the amount and type of interactivity provided. The
fully interactive version yielded the greatest recall but took longer to complete than any of the other presentations. Time
to complete the instruction was shortest, and the resulting rate of learning was greatest, for the simple linear video presentation.
We study the comprehension of a multimedia technical document about gear functioning by young pupils. The research is focused on the effect of three factors on the construction of a mental model: illustration format (animated versus static) signaling cues (presence versus absence) learner-control of information delivery (three rhythms of presentation: speed, slow and self-controlled). The experimental procedure, conducted with 123 children, follows three phases: pre-test, individual passation of the lesson, comprehension test, delayed post-test. The goal of the pre-test is the evaluation of prior knowledge about gears, but also the control of spatial and verbal working memory aptitude and reading performance. The results show an effect of the animated format, of signaling cues and of the rhythm on the immediate comprehension test and delayed test. For the immediate comprehension test, these effects are different according to the kind of comprehension question (recall, transfer, explanation). These effects are maintained at the delayed post-test, for the self-controlled condition and for the pupils with low prior knowledge. The factor information delivery rhythm shows an effect for the delayed post-test. Our observation device of the behaviour of the child during the lesson was specially designed to explore the reading strategies between the medias.
Sensitivity to the correspondence between a scale model and the larger space it represents emerges between and 3 years of age. In three of the four experiments reported here, young children watched as a miniature toy was hidden somewhere in a scale model of a room. Then the children were asked to retrieve an analogous toy that was hidden in the corresponding place in the room itself. According to the data reported here, success in this and a related task requires that children understand that the model is related to or represents the room. Children below the age of 33 or 34 months are extremely unlikely to become aware of this correspondence, even with extensive instructions and demonstrations. Children a few months older very readily grasp the relation when it is pointed out to them. This research reveals the importance of awareness of the representational relation between a symbol (the model) and its referent (the room) in early symbolization.
We investigated whether the tendency to imitate or emulate is influenced by the availability of causal information, and the amount of information available in a display. Three and 5-year-old children were shown by either a live or video model how to obtain a reward from either a clear or an opaque puzzle box. Some of the actions in the sequence were causally relevant to retrieving the reward, whereas others were irrelevant. The clear box made the causally irrelevant actions visible, whereas the opaque box prevented them from being seen. Results indicated that both 3- and 5-year-old children imitated the irrelevant actions regardless of the availability of causal information following a live demonstration. In contrast, the 3-year-olds employed an emulative approach, omitting irrelevant actions, when the information available was degraded in a video demonstration. However, the 5-year-olds were unaffected by the degraded information and employed an imitative approach. We suggest that imitation develops to be such an adaptive human strategy that it may often be employed at the expense of task efficiency.
We investigated developmental changes in the level of information children incorporate into their imitation when a model executes complex, hierarchically organized actions. A total of 57 3-year-olds and 60 5-year-olds participated, watching video demonstrations of an "artificial fruit" box being opened through a complex series of nine different steps. Half of each sample observed the same nine steps performed through either of two different, hierarchically organized procedures, whereas half witnessed differing component action details. Children were found to imitate at both levels but were more likely to copy at the higher hierarchical level than at the level of specific action details. Fidelity to hierarchical organization, but not to the imitation of specific detail, increased with age. However, variation in imitativeness across children at one of these levels did not predict imitativeness at the other level.
Infants learn less from a televised demonstration than from a live demonstration, the video deficit effect. The present study employs a novel approach, using touch screen technology to examine 15-month olds' transfer of learning. Infants were randomly assigned either to within-dimension (2D/2D or 3D/3D) or cross-dimension (3D/2D or 2D/3D) conditions. For the within-dimension conditions, an experimenter demonstrated an action by pushing avirtual button on a 2D screen or a real button on a 3D object. Infants were then given the opportunity to imitate using the same screen or object. For the 3D/2D condition, an experimenter demonstrated the action on the 3D object, and infants were given the opportunity to reproduce the action on a 2D touch screen (and vice versa for the 2D/3D condition). Infants produced significantly fewer target actions in the cross-dimension conditions than in the within-dimension conditions. These findings have important implications for infants' understanding and learning from 2D images and for their using 2D media as the basis of actions in the real world.
Obra que desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria estudia el desarrollo cognoscitivo del niño, a la luz del contexto sociocultural; pone de manifiesto los procesos socioculturales mediante los que el niño adquiere y amplia sus habilidades y como desarrollo su inteligencia, a partir del contacto con el pensamiento compartido con otras personas.
The availability of educational programming aimed at infants and toddlers is increasing, yet the effect of video on language acquisition remains unclear. Three studies of 96 children aged 30-42 months investigated their ability to learn verbs from video. Study 1 asked whether children could learn verbs from video when supported by live social interaction. Study 2 tested whether children could learn verbs from video alone. Study 3 clarified whether the benefits of social interaction remained when the experimenter was shown on a video screen rather than in person. Results suggest that younger children only learn verbs from video with live social interaction whereas older children can learn verbs from video alone. Implications for verb learning and educational media are discussed.
To date, developmental research has rarely addressed the notion that imitation serves an interpersonal, socially based function. The present research thus examined the role of social engagement on 24-month-olds' imitation by manipulating the social availability of the model. In Experiment 1, the children were more likely to imitate the exact actions of a live socially responsive model compared to a videotaped model who could not provide socially contingent feedback. In Experiment 2, the children were more likely to imitate the exact actions of a model with whom they could communicate via a closed-circuit TV system than a videotaped model who could not provide interactive feedback. This research provides clear evidence that children's imitative behavior is affected by the social nature of the model. These findings are discussed in relation to theories on imitation and the video deficit.
This research examines whether infants actively contribute to the achievement of joint reference. One possibility is that infants tend to link a a label with whichever object they are focused on when they hear the label. If so, infants would make a mapping error when an adult labels a different object than the one occupying their focus. Alternatively, infants may be able to use a speaker's nonverbal cues (e.g., line of regard) to interpret the reference of novel labels. This ability would allow infants to avoid errors when adult labels conflict with infants' focus. 64 16-19-month-olds were taught new labels for novel toys in 2 situations. In follow-in labeling, the experimenter looked at and labeled a toy at which infants were already looking. In discrepant labeling, the experimenter looked at and labeled a different toy than the one occupying infants' focus. Infants' responses to subsequent comprehension questions revealed that they (a) successfully learned the labels introduced during follow-in labeling, and (b) displayed no tendency to make mapping errors after discrepant labeling. Thus infants of only 16 to 19 months understand that a speaker's nonverbal cues are relevant to the reference of object labels; they already can contribute to the social coordination involved in achieving joint reference.
We examined inhibitory control as a quality of temperament that contributes to internalization. Children were assessed twice, at 26-41 months (N = 103) and at 43-56 months (N = 99), on repeated occasions, in multiple observational contexts and using parental reports. Comprehensive behavioral batteries incorporating multiple tasks were designed to measure inhibitory control at toddler and preschool age. They had good internal consistencies, corresponded with maternal ratings, and were developmentally sensitive. Individual children's performance was significantly correlated across both assessments, indicating stable individual differences. Girls surpassed boys at both ages. Children's internalization was observed while they were alone with prohibited objects, with a mundane chore, playing games that occasioned cheating, being induced to violate standards of conduct, and assessed using maternal reports. Inhibitory control was significantly associated with internalization, both contemporaneously and as a predictor in the longitudinal sense. The implications for considering children's temperament as a significant, yet often neglected contributor to developing internalization are discussed.
The language children hear presents them with a multitude of co-occurrences between words and things in the world, and they must repeatedly determine which among these manifold co-occurrences is relevant. Social factors--such as cues regarding the speaker's referential intent--might serve as one guide to whether word-object covariation should be registered. In 2 studies, infants (15-20 months and 18-20 months in Studies 1 and 2, respectively) heard novel labels at a time when they were investigating a single novel object; in one case the label was uttered by a speaker seated within the infant's view and displaying concurrent attention to the novel toy (coupled condition), whereas in the other case the label emanated from a speaker seated out of the infant's view (decoupled condition). In both studies, subsequent comprehension questions indicated that infants of 18-20 months registered a stable link between label and object in the coupled conditions, but not in the decoupled condition, despite the fact that covariation between label and object was equivalent in the 2 conditions. Thus, by 18-20 months children are inclined to establish a mapping between word and object only when a speaker displays signs of referring to that object.
It is widely recognised that impaired social relations are characteristic of school-aged children with behavioural disorders, and predict a poor long-term outcome (Parker & Asher, 1987). However, little is known about the early antecedents of social impairment in behaviourally disturbed children. The aim of the present study was to explore three areas of potential dysfunction in younger children: theory of mind, emotion understanding, and executive function. Forty preschoolers, rated by their parents on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1994) as "hard to manage" (H2M) were compared with a control group on a set of: (1) theory of mind tasks (including an emotion prediction task involving either a nice or a nasty surprise); (2) emotion understanding stories (that required affective perspective-taking skills as well as situational understanding); and (3) simple executive function tasks (adapted for preschoolers, and tapping inhibitory control, attentional set-shifting, and working memory). Small but significant group differences were found in all three cognitive domains. In particular, hard-to-manage preschoolers showed poor understanding of emotion and executive control, poor prediction or recall of a false belief, and better understanding of the belief-dependency of emotion in the context of a trick than a treat. Moreover, executive function was associated with performance on the theory of mind tasks for the hard-to-manage group alone, suggesting both direct and indirect links between executive dysfunction and disruptive behaviour.
This study examined longitudinal and concurrent relations between temperament, ability estimation, and injury proneness. Longitudinal assessments of Inhibitory Control were collected through a behavioral battery at toddler (33 months) and preschool ages (46 months). Parent-reported measures of Inhibitory Control and Extraversion also were obtained at those ages. At school age (76 months), children participated in a set of tasks to assess overestimation and underestimation of physical abilities. Parents provided reports of children's temperament and injury history at school age. Results showed that children who were high on Extraversion and low on Inhibitory Control as toddlers and preschoolers tended to overestimate their physical abilities and to have more unintentional injuries at age 6. Children low on Extraversion and high on Inhibitory Control tended to underestimate their physical abilities. Implications for injury prevention are discussed.
Despite considerable debate about whether nonhuman primates learn to use tools via imitation, this type of learning by children has received surprisingly little attention. The findings of two studies that go some way toward filling this gap are reported here. Study 1 showed that when 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 68) were shown a correct solution to a tool-using task (which they could not solve spontaneously), all the children in both age groups managed at least a partial solution. When children were shown an incorrect solution followed by a correct solution, 2-year-olds again produced only a partial solution. By contrast, most 3-year-olds produced a full solution. Study 2 replicated this age change in a separate sample of children (N = 100) with a different tool-using task. Study 2 also showed that 3-year-olds benefit from observing an incorrect action when it can be contrasted with a correct action: they chose the more effective of the two actions. Taken together, the two studies indicate that by 3 years of age, children do not indiscriminately imitate actions on a tool, but selectively reproduce those actions that have a desired causal effect.
This research examined the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control (IC; a central component of executive functioning) and theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in preschool-age children. Across two sessions, 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 107) were given multitask batteries measuring IC and ToM. Inhibitory control was strongly related to ToM, r = .66, p < .001. This relation remained significant controlling for age, gender, verbal ability, motor sequencing, family size, and performance on pretend-action and mental state control tasks. Inhibitory tasks requiring a novel response in the face of a conflicting prepotent response (Conflict scale) and those requiring the delay of a prepotent response (Delay scale) were significantly related to ToM. The Conflict scale, however, significantly predicted ToM performance over and above the Delay scale and control measures, whereas the Delay scale was not significant in a corresponding analysis. These findings suggest that IC may be a crucial enabling factor for ToM development, possibly affecting both the emergence and expression of mental state knowledge. The implications of the findings for a variety of executive accounts of ToM are discussed.
To conduct a population-based survey of television and other media usage in young children to determine (1) total media usage; (2) the proportion of children who have televisions in their bedrooms and who eat breakfast or dinner in front of the television; and (3) predictors of parental concern about the amount of television their child watches.
Telephone survey administered to 1454 parents of children <11 years old derived from a diverse clinic population.
The mean age of the index child was 5.05 years. Mean daily reported child media use was as follows: television (1.45 hours; SD, 1.5); videos (1.1 hours; SD, 1.30); and computer games (0.54 hours; SD, 0.96). Thirty percent of parents reported that their child ate breakfast or dinner in front of the television in the past week, and 22% were concerned about the amount of television that their child watched. In multivariate linear regression, eating breakfast or dinner in front of the television in the past week was associated with increased hours of television viewing (0.38 hours [0.21, 0.54]) and video (0.19 hours [0.04, 0.34]). Having a television in a child's bedroom was associated with increased hours of television (0.25 hours [0.07, 0.43]), video viewing (0.31 hours [0.16, 0.47]), and computer games (0.21 hours [0.10, 0.32]). In general, higher parental education was associated with decreased hours of television and video but not computer games. Older children were 2 to 3 times more likely than younger children to have a television in their bedroom and to have eaten a meal in front of it in the past week. More educated parents were less likely to report that their child had a television in their bedroom and more likely to be concerned about the amount of television their child viewed.
Combined video and computer game usage exceeded television usage. Both children of low- and high-income parents are at risk for certain behaviors associated with television usage. Parents whose children watched more television were more likely to be concerned about the amount of television their child viewed.
This chapter deals with the two very influential theorist of Picture perception–the “innocent eye” and the “intelligent eye.” It argues that the process of developing an “intelligent eye” to interpret and understand pictures is a very complex and protracted process, a process infants begin with a relatively (but not a fully) “innocent eye.” Understanding and using pictures is not only a complex process, but it is also a very important one. Pictures are ubiquitous in most modem societies. It is illustrated that, aspects of picture-referent relations that seem transparent to adults are not obvious to young children, even when the picture depicts an array currently visible or even the child himself or herself. Young children do not even share the very strong, and natural-seeming, preference older individuals have for viewing pictures in an upright orientation. Thus, it is concluded that, an important part of the development of pictorial competence is figuring out how pictures and the reality they represent are related.
Although prior research clearly shows that toddlers have difficulty learning from video, the basis for their difficulty is unknown. In the 2 current experiments, the effect of social feedback on 2-year-olds' use of information from video was assessed. Children who were told "face to face" where to find a hidden toy typically found it, but children who were given the same information by a person on video did not. Children who engaged in a 5-min contingent interaction with a person (including social cues and personal references) through closed-circuit video before the hiding task used information provided to find the toy. These findings have important implications for educational television and use of video stimuli in laboratory-based research with young children.
I advance the hypothesis that the earliest phases of language acquisition -- the developmental transition from an initial universal state of language processing to one that is language-specific -- requires social interaction. Relating human language learning to a broader set of neurobiological cases of communicative development, I argue that the social brain 'gates' the computational mechanisms involved in human language learning.
The objectives of this study were to describe media access and use among US children aged 0 to 6, to assess how many young children fall within the American Academy of Pediatrics media-use guidelines, to identify demographic and family factors predicting American Academy of Pediatrics media-use guideline adherence, and to assess the relation of guideline adherence to reading and playing outdoors.
Data from a representative sample of parents of children aged 0 to 6 (N = 1051) in 2005 were used. Descriptive analyses, logistic regression, and multivariate analyses of covariance were used as appropriate.
On a typical day, 75% of children watched television and 32% watched videos/DVDs, for approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes, on average. New media are also making inroads with young children: 27% of 5- to 6-year-olds used a computer (for 50 minutes on average) on a typical day. Many young children (one fifth of 0- to 2-year-olds and more than one third of 3- to 6-year-olds) also have a television in their bedroom. The most common reason given was that it frees up other televisions in the house so that other family members can watch their own shows (54%). The majority of children aged 3 to 6 fell within the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, but 70% of 0- to 2-year-olds did not.
This study is the first to provide comprehensive information regarding the extent of media use among young children in the United States. These children are growing up in a media-saturated environment with almost universal access to television, and a striking number have a television in their bedroom. Media and technology are here to stay and are virtually guaranteed to play an ever-increasing role in daily life, even among the very young. Additional research on their developmental impact is crucial to public health.