Digital Childhood:

1
Digital Childhood

• Electronic Media in Young Childrens Lives
• Elizabeth A. Vandewater
• Public Health and Environment
• Research Triangle Institute

2
Funding

• Primary Funding
• National Science Foundation (BCS-0623856)
• IRADS Collaborative Research Influences of
  Digital Media on Very Young Children
  
• Other Sources of Funding
• The Kaiser Family Foundation
• Monitoring Young Childrens Technology Use
• Brainy Baby Corporation
• Video as a Teaching Tool for Infants and
  Toddlers
  
• Disney Corporation
• Infant Video Viewing and Language Development

3
Young Childrens Media Landscape in the
Millennium 2000

• Children use electronic media 2-5 hours daily
• More time with television than any other single
  activity except sleep
  
• Explosion of products marketed to the very young
  
  
• Baby Einstein, Baby Mozart
• Computer Lapware
• Preschool Video Games
• Yet, we knew relatively little about the impact
  of this use.
  
• Vast majority of existing work focused on older
  children
  

4
Rising Concerns

• American Academy of Pediatrics (2001)
• No screen time children
• No more than 2 hours daily after that
• Childrens bedrooms should be TV free
• Recommendations based on scant empirical evidence

5
Digital childhood Electronic media use among
infants, toddlers and preschoolers

• Vandewater, E. A., Rideout, V., Wartella, E. A.,
  Huang, X., Lee, J. H., Shim, M. (2007).
  Pediatrics, 119, e1006-e1015
  

6
Research Questions

• How much media do young children (0-6) use?
• How much access to media do they have in the
  home?
  
• How many young children fall within the American
  Academy of Pediatrics media-use guidelines?
  

7
Sample

• Survey of 1051 parents of children aged 6 months
  to 6 years selected by random-digit telephone
  dialing.
  
• Response rate 33
• Calls staggered over times of day and days of the
  week.
  
• Vast majority (81) of respondents were mothers.
• Ethnicity
• 60 non-Hispanic white, 14 Black, 20 as
  Hispanic/Latino, 6 other
  
• Annual Income
• 6 10 000 or less, 10 10 000-19 999, 13 20
  000-29 999, 21 30 000-49 000, 18 of 50
  000-74 999, 11 75 000-99 999, and 11 100
  000 or more
• Family Structure
• 76 two-parent family home, 23 single-parent
  family home
  

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How much media do young children use?
9
How much access to media do they have in the
home?
10
Parents reasons for putting TV in their young
childs bedroom
11
How many young children fall within the AAP
media-use guidelines?
12
Conclusions

• Young children growing up in a media saturated
  environment
  
• Media and technology part of the fabric of their
  daily lives
  
• Few parents follow the AAP Guidelines
• Consequences Developmental Implications?

13
Video as a Teaching Tool for Infants and Toddlers

• Can Babies Learn from Commercially Available
  Video?
  

14
Two Studies

• Can infants and toddlers learn a novel shape from
  video?
  
• Brainy Baby Shapes Colors
• Does viewing a language based infant video impact
  infant language development?
  
• Baby Einstein Baby Wordsworth First words
  around the house

15
Can infants learn a novel shape from commercial
video?

• Assessing the Educational Impact of Brainy Baby
• (under review, Journal of Media and Children)

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Study Design

• Post-test only design
• Novel shape the crescent
• Randomly assigned to one of two conditions
• Experimental (n 32) 10 minutes with Brainy
  Babys Baby Shapes 1 DVD - lessons on circles,
  squares, rectangles, triangles and crescents
  
• Control (n 26) 10 minutes with the same DVD
  lessons on crescents replaced with video of toys
  dancing
  
• Community Sample
• Austin, TX and surrounding areas
• Descriptive Statistics
• Age range 13 to 33 months Mean age 21.95
  Months. (SD 5.21)
  
• Total N 58
• 57 Boys, 43 Girls
• Avg. Family Monthly Income 6,208

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Study DesignProcedure

• Children watched the video at home
• Parents were asked to show children the video a
  minimum of 5 times per week for a three week
  period
  
• Children were brought to the lab for testing
• Roughly 5 minute warm-up period
• 3 minute refresher video clip from the research
  video
  
• Identifying shapes for the experimenter by
  pointing them out in a picture book
  

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Major Findings

• Experimental group was 9 times more likely to
  identify the crescent than the control group
  
• The same results hold for children who were 24
  months or less
  
• No difference between the groups on childrens
  ability to identify any other shapes
  

19
Differences in shape recognition for whole sample
20
Differences in shape recognition for children
under 24 months old
21
Conclusions

• Findings suggest that young children can learn
  from video, even children under the age of two
  
• Content is key when given content with a clear
  educational curricula, young children can learn
  from it
  
• Further research needed to examine if children
  learn some things better from video than others

22
The Effect of Video on Infant Word Learning

• Assessing the educational impact of
• Baby Einstein

23
Background

• Virtually all infant videos claim to be
  educational
  
• When asked how they know Children like it
• Current literature on the impact of video on
  language development is mixed
  
• Some have found that word learning from video is
  possible (Krcmar, Grela, Lin, 2007 Linebarger
  Walker, 2005)
  
• Some have found no relationship (DeLoache et al.,
  under review Robb, Richert Wartella., in
  press)
  
• Still others have found negative relationships
  (Chonchaiya Pruksananonda, 2008 Zimmerman et
  al., 2007)

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Our Question

• Given that only 30 of children under age of 2
  follow AAP guidelines
  
• Does viewing language based, commercially
  available infant video harm, not harm, or foster
  infant language development?
  
• Harm - infants exposed to video should show fewer
  language gains over time
  
• No harm - no difference in language gains over
  time in children exposed
  
• Foster - infants exposed to video should show
  greater language gains over time

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Study DesignCondition

• Randomly assigned to one of two conditions
• Experimental Group (n 126) Mailed a Baby
  Wordsworth DVD and asked to show it to child at
  least 2 times a week for next 4 weeks.
  
• Control Group (n 131) Given instructions to
  keep child from being exposed to Baby Wordsworth
  DVD over next 12 weeks.
  

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Experimental Longitudinal Design

• Age range 8 to 15 months at baseline (M11.24,
  SD2.28)
  
• Sample drawn from online panel provided by Survey
  Sampling International (SSI)
  
• Data collected via parental report on Web-based
  surveys
  
• Descriptive Statistics
• Baseline N 453
• Analysis N 257 (completed all 3 waves 56
  retention rate)
  
• 51 Boys, 48 Girls
• 81 White, 7 Black, 2 Latino, 4 Pacific
  Islander, 6 Native American or Other

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Language Outcomes

• Receptive and Expressive Language
• Receptive Words understood
• Expressive Words spoken
• Communicative Development Inventory (CDI)
• 89 words understood / spoken vocabulary
  checklist
  
• DVD words understood/spoken
• 10 words already included in CDI
• ball, book, chair, couch, cup, home, lamp,
  kitchen, table, blanket
  
• 11 words exclusively in DVD
• bear, bed, bedroom, blocks, bowl, cat, puzzle,
  refrigerator, telephone, tree, window

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Major Findings

• Children exposed to the video had a higher
  receptive vocabulary (words understood) at the
  end of the study
  
• The two groups did not differ on expressive
  vocabulary (words spoken).
  
• Main reason the experimental group scored higher
  on the CDI was because of the 10 words the CDI
  shared with DVD script.

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OLS Regressions Receptive Language
30
OLS Regressions Predicting Receptive Language at
Final Testing
31
Mean Differences in CDI Words Understood Over
Time
Sig
n.s.
n.s.
MANCOVA Results Time Main effect, ? .96, F (2,
238) 4.01, p on, ? .97, F (2, 238) 2.81, p 32
Mean Differences in DVD Words Understood Over
Time
Sig
n.s.
n.s.
MANCOVA Results Time Main effect, ? .97, F (2,
238) 3.05, p interaction, ? .97, F (2, 238) 3.03, P 33
Conclusions

• Findings suggest that young children can learn
  from video, even children under the age of two
  
• Content is key
• Language Development May take longer to become
  evident than existing studies have run

34
Digital Childhood

• Electronic Media in Young Childrens Lives
• Elizabeth A. Vandewater
• Public Health and Environment
• Research Triangle Institute