Parent-Child Screen Media Co-Viewing: Influences on Toddlers' Word Learning and Retention

Parent-Child Screen Media Co-Viewing: Influences on Toddlers’ Word Learning and Retention Clare E. Sims (Clare.Holtpatrick@Colorado.Edu) Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, 345 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0345 USA Eliana Colunga (Eliana.Colunga@Colorado.Edu) Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, 345 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0345 USA Abstract relationship between parental behavior during active co- viewing and children’s learning outcomes. The results suggest meaningful links between characteristics of the screen media viewing context and children’s learning of video content. Exploring the attributes and effects of co- viewing is vital for guiding further research on children’s screen mediated learning and applying this work in practice. In the remainder of the introduction we will briefly review the evidence for the video deficit effect in the domain of language as well as the existing research on co-viewing with young children. Many questions on this topic remain, and our approach of linking co-viewing to word learning in the moment contributes to this emerging literature. Screen media, such as television and videos, are a common part of young children’s lives. Yet infants and toddlers have been shown to learn less effectively from screens than from interactions with another person. Using a quasi-experimental design we explored how social factors of screen media co- viewing impact children’s learning outcomes. We observed parents co-viewing a novel word training video with their children, then tested children for immediate and delayed word learning. We then investigated the links between parental speech during co-viewing and children’s subsequent word learning. Parental speech that encouraged children to produce the novel words predicted better retention of word learning, whereas speech that focused more on the video itself rather than the content was negatively associated with learning. The Video Deficit in Language Learning Keywords: Screen media; co-viewing; word learning. Introduction Screen media, such as television, videos, computers, and hand-held devices like smartphones and tablets, are an increasingly common part of young children’s lives. Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of two not watch any screen media (AAP, 2010), survey data reveal that 43% of children in this age group watch TV every day (Rideout & Hamel, 2006). This may be partly due to the recent proliferation of screen media content aimed specifically at infants and toddlers (e.g., Baby Einstein). Much of this content is presented with educational claims, including in the domain of language development (Fenstermacher et al., 2010). However, research that actually compares children’s learning from screen media to their learning from face-to- face interactions with another person reveals a video deficit effect (Anderson & Pempek, 2005). That is, across varied experimental paradigms, infants and toddlers learn less effectively from a screen than from a person. Is it possible to effectively facilitate infants’ and toddlers’ learning from screen media? Factors that may impact this learning include the complexity of the information on screen, whether key information is highlighted or repeated, or the presence of social cues that help children direct attention to what is important. In the work presented here we employed a quasi-experimental approach to investigate the role of a common social context for screen mediated learning: co-viewing a video with a parent. We explored the From birth, infants are constantly exposed to language, both from live and mediated sources. By manipulating whether information to be learned is presented through screen media or through face-to-face interactions, researchers have identified a video deficit effect in the domain of language development—infants and toddlers more effectively learn language from a person than from screen media. The video deficit has been demonstrated in two types of tasks in this domain: phoneme distinction and word learning. One study took advantage of a change in phoneme discrimination that occurs in infancy. At six months of age infants can discriminate phonetic speech contrasts from their native language as well as from a non-native language to which they have never been exposed (e.g., Werker, Gilbert, Humphrey, & Tees, 1981). However, over the first year of life, infants become attuned to distinctions between speech sounds in their native language, leading to an inability to recognize speech contrasts that do not exist in that language. Kuhl, Tsao, and Liu (2003) tested what kinds of exposure to non-native speech distinctions can prolong 9-month-old infants’ ability to perceive those distinctions. These researchers found a video deficit in maintaining phonetic distinctions: infants exposed to non-native speech on video lost their sensitivity to non-native speech distinctions, whereas those exposed to live speech were still able to discriminate between non-native phonemes. In fact, infants in the video exposure group performed equivalently to a control group with no exposure; screen mediated speech led to the same outcome as no speech at all.