Rachel Barr - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although infants are exposed to television for many hours per day during infancy, very little is known about its real behavioral impact. To date we know that by 14- to 18-months, infants can imitate simple actions they saw on television 1 day earlier. Their ability to imitate televised actions, however, lags significantly behind their ability to imitate those same actions that were demonstrated by a live model. The basis for this lag is unclear, but several possibilities are obvious. First, laboratory studies have used only very short single presentations, but in the real world, the same televised information is typically frequently repeated within a segment and presented on many occasions. Second, laboratory studies have not included features common to commercially available televised programs. Finally, laboratory studies have presented only an isolated piece of televised information, but in the real world, multiple pieces of information are typically presented at once. In three studies, independent groups of 12-, 15-, 18-, and 21-month-old will be exposed to live or videotaped demonstrations of target actions, and their imitation performance will be measured 24 hr later. In the first study, the number of repetitions of the target actions will be increased from 3 to 6 for the video group and will continue to be doubled until infants in the video group imitate the same number of actions as infants in the live group. In the second study, attention to and imitation of televised sequences containing sound effects and lively music will be measured. In the third study ways to increase generalization and transfer of knowledge gained from television to objects that differ in size or shape will be examined (1) by modeling the target actions on a variety of stimuli and (2) by modeling the target actions on one object after preexposure to two objects that differ in shape and/or color. In both cases, infants will be tested with the original object or one that differs in color and/or shape. The results will have important theoretical implications for infant memory processing of two-dimensionally presented information. They will also have important applied implications for developing effective educational programs for normal infants and intervention programs for compromised infants in this expanding digital world.

Young children watch television regularly. By two years of age, 90 percent of US children are viewing television on a daily basis. With support from the National Science Foundation, Rachel Barr, Ph.D., of Georgetown University and Peter Gerhardstein, Ph.D., of Binghamton University will examine in young children how memory and perceptual factors influence transfer of learning from television and touch screens. Early educational media experiences after two years of age can improve the well-being of children, preparing them for school entry and academic and social success. However, exposure to content that is not developed specifically for young children can have deleterious affects on development, resulting in aggressive behavior, consumerism, and attentional problems. An expanding range of two-dimensional devices, including touch screens (e.g., iPhone, iPad, etc.), are now ubiquitous. In order to learn from television and touch screens, children need to transfer information across contexts from two-dimensional images to real-life three-dimensional objects. Although the relationship between two-dimensional media content and the corresponding real three-dimensional referents is obvious to adults, that relationship is challenging for young children. They show less learning from television and touch screens than they do from live interactions, that is, a transfer deficit in learning. The goal of this project is to understand and ameliorate the transfer deficit. Children are shown how to make a puzzle on video, on a touch screen or 'live' with the real puzzle board, and then the children's ability to imitate those actions is tested either on a touch screen or with the real puzzle board. The research prediction is that learning from a touch screen is easier than learning from video, due to fewer cues being provided on video. Second, the expectation is that both repetition and practice ameliorate the transfer deficit effect, and that delay exacerbates it. Third, in order to examine perceptual factors, characteristics of the puzzle are systematically changed to add depth, details and context cues. The researchers predict that these additional cues can ameliorate the transfer deficit.

This research is leading to recommendations regarding when and under what circumstances the use of two-dimensional as opposed to three-dimensional (live) presentations can better address the needs of children in learning contexts at various points in development. Exploration of the helpful and deleterious factors, both perceptual and memory-based, that affect learning from screen media early in life can provide a better understanding of how to design programs to maximize young children's benefit from such experiences. If the transfer deficit can be ameliorated, digital delivery of information has the potential to be highly cost-effective in reducing barriers to school readiness. There are broad implications of this research for early education. Transfer of learning across content and context is a core of educational policy. It enables the development of flexible thinking. These studies will provide new theoretical rationale, garnered from highly controlled manipulations about the developmental course of the transfer of learning in the digital age. A stronger understanding of the development of this skill will aid in developing public policy regarding the expanding development for new electronic devices for the child market.