B – The Video Deficit Effect

Lots of research has demonstrated that children learn better from live interactions than they do from screen media, an effect known as the video deficit. Even when children are capable of learning something from video, research typically shows that children learn better and faster through live interactions. This trend continues through childhood.

We talked about one example in lesson 4 on early language development. When 9-month-old children listened to a native Mandarin speaker in person, they learned the sounds of Mandarin, but when they heard the same speaker on DVD or audio CD, they showed no evidence of learning.

Other research examined infants’ ability to imitate actions they saw demonstrated in person or on video. Both the in-person and video groups imitated the action, but the group who was learning from the video required double the number of demonstrations before they could imitate from video. These 1- to 2-year-olds learned much faster from the live person.

One final example looked at children’s ability to learn words from videos or a combination of videos and live interactions. Children younger than 3 years were unable to learn from the video by itself, but they did learn new words when they interacted with an adult around the screen. The adult demonstrated the actions on the screen, labeled things, and provided the child with social interaction.

Although children older than 3 years were able to learn words from the video alone, they did not show the same depth of learning as children who had the adult interaction in addition to the video. Children learned better when they could interact with an adult in addition to watching the video.

Video Chats

While research indicates that children seem to learn from screens differently than they learn from live interactions, there is one exception—video chat.

Video chat is an interesting exception to screen time and one that the American Academy of Pediatrics acknowledged in their recommendations because even though children are using a screen, video-chat technology allows children to experience a live interaction with the person on the other side of the screen.

When children use video chats, they engage a genuine back-and-forth interaction with the person on the other side of the screen. The person can talk to them and respond accurately to them. Eye gaze across video chats is imperfect because of the relative positions of the screen and the camera, but video chats have many of the other elements that researchers think are critical to children’s ability to learn from live interactions.

Indeed, children seem to learn from video chats just like they learn from live interactions. Researchers taught children new words either through video, video chat, or live interactions. Two-year-olds learned the novel words from video chat just like they did from the live interactions. They did not learn from the video. This supports the idea that video chats should not be placed in the same screen category as traditional video.

Talking Toys

As we start to think about what interacting with a child looks like, a recent study tells us a little bit about what it’s not.

Professor Anna Sosa at Northern Arizona University was interested in talking toys—toys that label objects. This particular study used a talking farm, a baby cellphone, and a baby laptop. The researcher looked at parent-child interactions while children were playing with one of the talking toys.

Sosa found that when a child was playing with the talking toy, parents said fewer words and fewer content-specific words. Children also used fewer words, and the parent and child had less back-and-forth interaction.

The researcher noted that when something else, such as a toy, was doing the talking, parents seemed to let toy talk and respond for them. In essence, it’s as if the talking toy turns off the parent-child interaction.

The talking toy, although using words and making noises, cannot take the place of a real-life social interaction for children. The toy isn’t social, the parent is. This is important as we start to think about optimal parent-child interactions around technology.

Scaffolding

As we discussed in lesson 1, the psychologist Vygotsky talked about the Zone of Proximal Development. This zone of children’s knowledge represents skills that children can do or learn with help. In this zone, older or more capable people can help children acquire new skills by pushing them beyond their natural boundaries and therefore expanding their knowledge.

When adults support children this way, it is called scaffolding. Scaffolding is critically important to children’s ability to learn from screen media. Adults can help children:

• Make sense of the two-dimensional world of screens and draw parallels to the real world. For example, adults might say, “Do you see the dog on the screen? That’s just like Fido in our house. The dog on the screen is brown, and Fido is brown, too. Do you think the dog on the screen likes bones as much as Fido does?”
• Understand content by explaining new vocabulary words, helping children understand the actions of characters, or answering children’s questions.
• Navigate the fine-motor tasks related to technology. Computer mice are particularly difficult to operate.

Media Scaffolding

We’ll use the content from the next two videos to discuss scaffolding around media. While watching the videos, consider: What do you notice about how the educators scaffold children’s media use?

Video: Your Turn (0:12)

This video called Your Turn, shows an educator scaffolding content and turn-taking around a tablet.

Video: Restarting the Computer (1:59)

The video, Restarting the Computer, shows an educator scaffolding the technical aspects of using a computer, such as restarting and waiting for it to reboot.

C – Technology In Adult Lives

Just as technology is increasingly present in children’s lives, technology is also present in the lives of parents. Researchers have been curious about how adult use of technology affects children’s development.

In general, new research finds that when parents use digital technology around children, the quality and quantity of parent-child interactions decreases. Specifically, there are fewer parent-child interactions overall and lower responsivity to children’s bids for attention when parents use mobile technology in front of children. Some research has even suggested that parents respond to children with more hostility when the child interrupts their use of technology.

To the extent that children model their actions after the actions they see, children are also forming norms about how and when to use technology by watching their parents. In sum, when we think about the effect of screens on children’s development, we need to consider parents’ use of technology in addition to children’s use of technology.

Learning From Screens

Increasingly, researchers are beginning to understand that children learn from screens in the same way they learn in other contexts.

That is, children learn:

• When they are actively involved.
• When they are engaged.
• In socially interactive contexts.
• When the content is meaningful.

Using these principles, we can understand why technologies like video chat work so well—it satisfies all of these criteria! Similarly, when adults scaffold children’s media experiences, they create the ideal scenario for children’s learning.

Being able to develop abstract principles like these is helpful because research cannot keep up with new technologies, much less with particular apps and programs. These principles can help us evaluate new technologies and create quality learning experiences for children.

Vroom Tip

Check out this Vroom tip to get more ideas about how to support young children’s development. These same kinds of questions can be used to guide adult interactions with children around screens.

Does this tip make sense in the context of an early learning environment? If not, how will you adapt the activity to better fit that environment?