Young children’s contingent interactions with a touchscreen influence their memory for spatial and narrative content

ABSTRACT

Young children have difficulty learning from two-dimensional (2D) sources (e.g., television). One reason for this may be that 2D media lacks the contingent feedback present in social interactions. Touchscreens can provide contingent, reciprocal responses in the absence of a social partner, and thus may have the potential to overcome the challenges of learning by viewing. We assessed 30- to 48-month-old children’s memory for eBook content and traced objects after interactive or observational touchscreen exposure. The degree of interactivity with the touchscreen varied by three conditions of (1) close-mapping in which the touchscreen input corresponded closely with the output, (2) far-mapping, and (3) watching a screen recording. Children who watched the screen recording did best on delayed object recognition for traced objects, whereas results for the eBook material revealed a condition by gender by age (months) interaction. Girls’ memory for eBook material improved with increasing age after interacting via near- or far-mapping. Results are discussed in terms of gender and age differences in executive functioning and the capacity of cognitive load, and the limitations of contingent interactions.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank: the parents and their children who offered their time to participate in this study; to Katherine Janetski for her help with data collection, and Jessica Guy, Kyra Cox, Grace Mackie, Tom Clarke, Luisa Varcoe, and the Babylab interns; to the participants of the SRCD special topic meeting of Technology and Media in Child Development for discussion of preliminary findings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.