Week 8 Flashcards
Television and its effects on children’s development
Television has near-universal reach in the industrialised world, with television screen time relatively constant. Children watch a great deal of television and it has long been associated with long-term attention problems. However, is ‘screen time’ always bad for children’s development? In the following video, Dr Kaufman introduces research from the last decade, showing that the effects of interactive screen time are quite different from passive screen time. Is there merit in children having an iPad after all?
Changes in media use
Technological innovation has transformed media and its role in the lives of infants and young children. Zenith Media forecasts 26% of media consumption will be mobile in 2019 (Zenith Media, 2017). While traditional, broadcast television is still the largest single medium by consumption time, it is estimated the consumption between television and internet will narrow significantly by 2019, with the results correlating with the increased use of mobile and tablet devices by children (Hoh, 2017).
While recent research has found popular technologies like tablets and smartphones have improved digital literacy from a younger age (Coady, 2017), it is also believed to be leading to a developmental gap between toddlers who engage with educational apps on touchscreen devices compared to those who don’t, as they grow up. While this creates a sense of division and concern around the notion of the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, when it comes to households owning a mobile device, the gap by income has virtually disappeared (Howard, 2017) and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest younger children on the more favourable end of the app-gap are coming to school more ‘school ready’ (Holloway in Coady, 2017).
Effects of media use on children’s executive functioning
Does a fast-paced television show immediately influence preschool-aged children’s executive function? Take a look at The immediate impact of different types of television on young children’s executive function (PDF 448 KB) Download The immediate impact of different types of television on young children’s executive function (PDF 448 KB) (Lillard & Peterson, 2011, pp. 644–649).
Research spotlight: The effects of screen media content on young children’s executive functioning
Executive functioning was assessed pre- and post-screen media intervention.
Interacting with educational content improved working memory, relative to viewing.
Ability to delay gratification was greatest after the educational app intervention.
Huber, Yeates, Meyer, Fleckhammer, & Kaufman (2018)
While studies have found exposure to certain types of television content has demonstrated the impairment of the executive functioning of young children, it is still relatively unclear whether interacting with a touchscreen device affects executive functioning in the same way. Your essential reading by Huber et al. (2018) sheds some insight by examining executive functioning measures of working memory and response inhibition and task switching before and after a brief screen intervention.
The ‘video deficit’ and transfer of learning from screens to the real world
‘Video deficit’ refers to the phenomenon in which toddlers show better learning from in-person demonstrations by a live teacher than the same demonstration presented on video (Kirkorian et al., 2017). It is generally observed in toddlers, though there is some evidence to suggest children in the 30+ months range have demonstrated the effect of video deficit for more challenging tasks. Research in the area of video deficit is still developing and its exact nature remains unclear.
There are several complementary hypotheses for why the video deficit exists, the most convincing depicting a child’s ability to correctly remember information that was learned from video and transfer it to a real‐life situation (Kirkorian et al., 2017). However, further research is required to examine video deficit effects and information transfer across dimensions as we acquire a growing thirst to understand learning by infants and toddlers in line with the rapid expansion of available media choices.
Peers and the child as a social person (Links to an external site.) (Meadows, 2017, pp. 239–274) delves into the key theories and insights that will help you understand why peer relations are important.
- Piaget 1932 emphasised the contribution of the comparatively equal relationship between peers to moral development and emphasised resolving disagreement between peers to progress on cognitive tasks such as a perspective taking and conservation.
- Vygotksy 1978 and Wenger 1998 - emphasised the cooperative co-construction of social events as part of the process of development.
- Blos 1967 wrote of a turbulent process of individuation in adolescence when peers became an important influence shaping adolescents restructuring of their relationships with thei parents.
- Harris 1998 - the child devotes every scrap of energy to becoming part of the tribe other children reducing other influences to near zero and it is peer normative pressure that shapes development.
Development of Peer Relations:
- babies take interest in other babies, through infancy and early preschool years very young children co-ordinate their behaviour with peers imitate each other and show awareness of being imitated perform observe-respond and observe wait respond interchanges, help and share and produce responses which are appropriately differentiated to peer characteristics.
- Toddles can develop dominance hierarchies and in groups tough they are not yet very likely to define and enforce out groups.
- older preschool children who went to day care rapidly develop still moreeffective social skills, such as social cognition, TOM, intersubjectivity improves and can sustain longer sequences of play and conversation.
- coordinate thematic and sociodramatic play - these types of play are thought to provide opportunities for developing and communicating meaning, and opportunities for control, compromise and negotiation, over roles, scripts, rules and properties. Sociodramatic play can also provide opportunities for playing out issues with emotional content. Increases of prosocial behaviour, in conversation and in cooperation towards a shared goal.
- once peers are friends children show a preference for them as playmates, posotive and supportive behaviour.
- comparing conflicts with friends with conflicts with non-friends, conflicts with friends are more likely to be resolved by negotiation, worst disengagement and friends who have temporarily fallen out maintain proximity to each other rather than separating completely.
- as middle childhood progresses, peers become still more salient in childrens lives.
Friendships provide experience of give and take and involve joint activities, sharaed values, shared interests, loyalty, understanding and disclosure.
- the pattern of agressive behaviour towards peers continues to change through middle childhood - less instrumental aggression, more-long term hostility.
- peer relationships include more verbal and relational aggression, less physical aggression.
- girls = more gossip, engage in more corumination with their friends, harmful discussions such as wight and relationships.
- breaking a friendships is a source of distress as friends proviide amusing companions, confidantes, comforters, protectors. - girls experience this more as thei r relationships are more sensitive and intimate
- boys have mutual antipathies, develop of hostile co-existence. tend to be larger and less intimate than girls. competitive, issues of power and status are overt. similar in performance, motivation, levels of aggression.
- Knado 2008 aggression in Jews and Arab high school pupils
- popularity and lack of popularity are important in peer groups in midlde childhood. - popular = prettier, cleverer and more athletic, astute in social cognitiion, goals, not impulsive, manage their negative emotion.
- unpopular - rejected, negative views of own social self. less likely to have a mutual best friend - tend to be less supportive, less intimate and poor quality friendships.
Attachment and Parent Influences on Peer Relations:
- the early attachment relationships between child and parent seem to predict larger peer relationships and friendships.
- secure attachment = more positive friendships
- insecure attachment = negative behaviour
- Rubin - suggests that the childs early experience of parental warmth, sensitivity and responsivity induces a sense of trust in relationships and of oneself as worth of a positive response from others.
- Mind Mindedness - Meins - children who had poorer attachment, express and feel less trust, more hostility and more avoidance.
- unpopular kids parents = are intrusive, harsh
- popular kids parents - authoritative control, child-centred behaviour, more wamth
- parents involvement in the development of their childrens social skills is linked to the parents beliefs about the child about the peers and about the wider social world.
- either way considerations of how well the child is meeting the demands of the wide culture and what effect their peers may be having on his process can be very powerful
Peer group popularity and teachers views:
- the peer group microsystems may exist in close relation with the teacher-pupil microsystems.
- popular children are more likely to be seen by teachers as being helpful, good students. Rejected or aggressive children are seen as inconsiderate, noncompliant, troublemakers, and they are more likely to fail and to absent themselves from school.
Peer difficulties and externalising problems:
- children who are higher than normal on angry, reactive aggression tend to be rejected by their peers even if the general level of aggression, in peer groups is high.
- it seems likely that underlying behaviour problems contribute to both the peer rejection and the aggression and antisocial behaviour but that cumulative peer rejection and absence of friends may make adjustment problems even greater.
- peers deviancy training includes positive feedback for bad behaviour and contempt for good or normative behaviour, more experience of conflicts and aggressive conflict resolution, more enticement to mischief, more hostile rumination, and having partners in crime.
Peer difficulties and internalising problems:
- there is an association between difficulties in peer raltions and risk of internalising problems.
- children who are rejected by their peers are at increased risk of low social status, being victimised, feeling their lack of friends and suffering anxiety, depression, loneliness or low self-esteem.
- girls = worse if the peer rejection is long term
- individuals personal characteristics are likely to affect not just their risk of perr rejection, but also he nature and the duration of the impact of being rejected.
- having a good friend is protective against rumination and anxiety/depression, especially if this friend can protect you against bullying.
Adolescents and their peers:
- different environments afford different opportunities for doing these activities in relative safety and comfort with different implications for individuals reputation, activities and development.
- adolescents are something negatively influenced by their peers, but also sometimes positively and they are still influenced by their parents and other significant adults, sometimes, positively, sometimes negatively.
- adolescents views of moral issues, political issues and life path choices are at least as heavily influenced by their parents as by their peers - even hebaviour like smoking is better predicted by parents behaviour than by peers.
- dyads, cliques and crowds differ in the opportunities they offer for joint activities, intmacies and support.
- peer crows are important part of demarcating ones idvidual identit and ones affliation, even though, ironically, you may be a part of a crowd not because you have chosen to be but because it is the group that others have assigned you to.
- friends become more intimate and supportive with age
- internet groups offer cirtual support
- girls = focus on negative feelings and issues and rrood on them together which may be unhelpful.
- internet groups may promote behaviours which the everyday social world fears, such as anorexia or militant nihilism.
- members of high status crowds are more likely to regard it as fair to exlude non members than members of low status groups.
- individuals who are excluded from a group may develop ways of coping with this.
Popularity and Unpopularity with adolescent peers:
- popular = above average attractiveness and acceptabce, better social adaptation, slide into minor deviant behaviours
- girls 10 - 13 may gossip more
- feeling good about your popularity predicts good social fnuntioning.
Adolescents and Romantic Relationships:
- Erikson 1963 - see romantic relationship as deriving from earlier social relationships and as leading to better or worse social functioning in later life.
- adolescents romantic relationships may also enhance status with peers.
- early relationships = anxiety, how to make a relationship
- micro level social behaviours = making eye contact and smiling and ways of talking = healthier relationships.
- relationships handling unrequired longing, physical attraction and secual intimacy, jeaousy and betrayal, anxiety about displaying a false self.
- North US and European cultures place more emphasis on them as opposed to middle east and latin america.
- difficulties in adolescent relationships are associated with depression and anxiety, issues in other relationships and suicide ideation.
Bullying and Aggression:
- bullying - behaviour that harms or hurts another person, may be physical, indirect or relational, gossiping, inciting others to shun, spoiling others work.
- girls and boys report being victims at similar rates but boys are more likely to give a self report of being a bully. boys arent often bullied by girls, but girls are bullied by both sexes.
- they dish out similar amounts of verbal aggression but boys give and receive more physical aggression. Girls give more indirect aggression later.
- bullies manifest general aggression non-compliant behaviour to a wide range of people not just to their victims. bullying is often a group process.
- victims are targets of repeat aggression - passive victims are anxious and insecure. provocative victims are socially problematic.
- cortisol levels are higher after social rejection than social acceptance. they dont tell a teacher or a parents as bullying makes people vulnerable.
- online bullying = cyber bullying
- bullies are confident and even successful individuals who have reached a high status in their social network by terrorising others. occurs in all schools
Developmental Experiences associated with risk of becoming a bully or a vicitim:
- parenting which is cold, uninvolved, permissive = bullying in boys and both bullying and victimisation in girls. Maternal overprotectiveness = passive victims boys, maternal hostility = victim girls.
- personality = early temperament = more aggression and poorer social functioning.
- victims tend to be low on poularity, peer acceptance, fewer friends. Boy bullies who tend to be les popular as they are aggressive.
- may involve both strengths and distortions in social skills and self esteem.
- Crick and Dodge, Patterson and Snyder - reactively aggressive children see more social behaviours as signals of aggression by the other person and use fewer cues before making up their minds to act aggressively.
- it seems likely that bullies home experience leads tthem to see relationships as exploitative and to value dominance.
Gender:
- gender shapes many aspects of lifes
- evolutionary psychs focus on sex, signal fertility, freedom from characteristics that would reduce ones reproductive potential.
- often an argument that the male has spent less on any particular offspring than the female and gains most advantage by fertilising as many females as possible wihtout investing further in the resultant babies.
- evolutionary theory - sexual differences
- men = healthy and dominate = get a healthy female and a supportive mate to raise children. suggest that women have agentic skills to persuade men.
- men have more responsibility in early history.
- in humans, males tend to reach reproductive maturity at a later age, to engage in more risky and aggressive behaviours and to have a shorter life span.
- with our large brain and highly social ways of living we may be especially able to learn, develop and change from our expected genetic programe to an experience-dependent one.
Socio-Cultural theories of gender:
- sex variability is greater, than between sex difference.
- Bronfenbrenners model insists individuals development is embedded in sets of social structures and social interactions.
- in many cultures gender differences involve more power, status, and self-confidence for men, less for women.
- men = agency, instrumentality, dominance
- women = communion, expressively and nurturance
- differences in sexes in self-ratings - personality inventories, observed behaviour.
- spanish men used insults about sexual fidelity of their opponents, mothers, sisters, wives which dutch and german men did not
Development of Sex differences in children:
- small y choms in men, larger x for females.
- given that there are hormonal differences in the development of the foetus, there may be some differences in brain development which could underlie behavioural differences.
Infancy Differences:
- sometimes parents report differences between boy babies and girls strangers cannot
- no evidence of infant preference for same sex tyed objects,
- differentiation in parents behaviour - clothes toys = boys are harder to tell.
- Galsworthy 2000 - found statistcally significant sex differences in cognitive tests - sex accounted for only 3% of the variance in the toddlers verbal ability, 1% of the variance in their nonverbal ability.
Differences in Preschool and early school years:
- children verbal labeling of people gender emerges around the age of 2, gender sterotyping used associations between gender and activities or objects have been elicited from children younger than 3.
- some preschool children may already feel pressure to like or dislike activities because of heir own gender.
- age 3 - 5 gender is fixed.
- stereotypes of gender typically begin with observable features and activities - boys dont ware pink
- kids who watched stereotyped tv and books, expressed stronger gender sterotypes than those who got less exposure.
- play with same sex at the age of 2
- have little difficulty making judgements on toys and activities for gender
-express cultural stereotypes at 3 - 5 years
- Egan and Perry 2001 - suggested that it has 5 components: 1. knowledge of one gender membership 2. perceived similarity to others of the same gender 3. satisfaction with ones gender membership 4. felt pressure to conform to the stereotype 5. belif that ones own gender is as good as or superior to the other. Further suggested that appraising oneself as not typical of ones gender not feeling contentment with ones gender membership and feeling under strong pressre to confirm to the stereotype would be associated with worse psychological adjustment in the shape of low self-esteem, more internalising symptoms and peer rejection.
Influences on the development of a gendered social world: Paerents:
- parents do provide their children with explicit instruction about what gener appropriate for them in terms of activities and careers.
- parents work hard to develop boys
- Fong - chinas one child policy = led to empowerment of young women.
- childrens acceptance or rejection or even knowledge of gender stereotypes does not seem to be simply a matter of accepting the indoctrination that their parents supply.
Influences on the development of a gendered social world: Siblings:
- McHale 2001 - describe younger siblings modeling their gendered attitudes, personality and activities on their older siblings with older siblings being a strong influence than parents.
Influences on the development of a gendered social world: Peers:
- boys = play in larger groups, engage in more rough play
- girls = engage in smaller cliques, talk more, feelings
- before the age of 7- to spend more time in same sex groups and give greater attentio and sensitivity to the opinion of one same sex peers which would further increase thei influence.
- may be more cross-sex friendships in private or if the choice of playmates is limited than in the age-structured school world, where reputation is so much at risk.
- girls can be bitchy
- boys are aggression
Influences on the development of a gendered social world:Schools:
- gender-stereotyped beliefs about areas of achievement seem to develop during primary school with girls at risk of believing that girls cant do maths and science and boys at risk of believing that doing well at languages is not masculine
Learning the social world of school:
- evidence that good-quality day care accelerates development of school like skills
- poor day care = stressed and anxious kids.
- if people believe that is it possible to improve through their own efforts they are in bettwe psychological position than someone ho thinks that their abilities are fixed and they cannot control how well they do.
- Dweck says experiences make you a resilient learner and is effective in lassroom teaching
- teachers provide scaffolding
- self-determination or autonomy and sense of belonging = motivation
- students who believe that they can organise themselves effectively and learn the appropriate behaviour tend to achieve more and remain happier than those who believe they cannot succeed or cannot impove.
- some learners are very anxious about their role as a leaner and in particular the implications of failing to succeed.
- Thompson 2004 - argues that one of the major problems leading to underachievement and thusimeding cognitive development is failure-avoidant behaviour.
-feedback = warm and good Vygotskian scaffolding
- Braley and Corwyn 2005 - suggest that opportunities to wrok for mastery are also crucially important.
- self-regulation, effective persistence and competence emerge as children observe those who are more competent than themselves.
- Bradley and Corwyn 2005 - suggest that these children will become rather passive and unwilling to take risks, react to learning challenges and opportunities
Children and their fellow pupils:
- generally concerned to maintain an advantageous self-image.
- crowded classrooms = lower self-image.
- have found that children who belonged to a counterculture opposed to the teacher centered ethos, do less well on tasks
Children and Media:
- the introduction and spread of new media affects how we spend our lives and hence how children develop.
- western children are targets and consumers of media
- media to pass time, seek info, modulate arousal and social utility.
- no long terms effects established by research
- 30% of US adults have a bad health rate and 50% by 2030
- western diet is more sugar and fat, less physical and effect on early brain development
- home = more tv or playing on line and eating snacks.
- hours of tv watching appears to be negatively correlation with cognitive development.
- violence and media - video games cause violence
Previous study results have suggested a longitudinal association between entertainment television and later attention problems. The immediate impact of different types of television on young children’s executive function (PDF 448 KB) Download The immediate impact of different types of television on young children’s executive function (PDF 448 KB) (Lillard & Peterson, 2011, pp. 644–649) will walk you through research to help you understand whether a fast-paced television show immediately influences preschool-aged children’s executive function.
- preschool aged children watch >90 minutes of TV daily and correlational studies link early TV Veiwing with deficits in executive functioning (EF)
- a collection of prefrontal skills underlying goal-directed behaviour, including attention, working memory, inhibitory control, problem solving, self-regulation and delay of gratification
- entertainment TV is particularly associated with long-term attention problems thus its viewing might be most likely to have negative short-term impacts.
- fast-paced TV would do nothing to train internally controlled attention over the long-term. In the short-term the effort to encode rapidly presented events could tax childrens executive resources.
- hypothesised that watching a fast-paced cartoon would have an immediate negative impact on childrens EF relative to watching a slower-paced, realistic educational cartoon, or engaging in a self-paced activity such as a drawing.
- as a precaution and to examine whether blind experimenters are important in this domain, we tested one-half of the children with a blind experimenter and compared results under the 2 conditions.
- Methods - 60, 4 year olds were recruited from a databased of families willing to participate in research, white and middle upper class. Randomly assigned. Lab, 90 minute clips of the fast-paced or educational shows were played on an acer notebook computer. Tower of Hanoi tqask was used, children who broke a rule or failed to complete the task were given a score of 0. next children were given the HTKS task, after the HTKS task children completed a delay-of gratification. Then children then participated in a creativity task before completing the backward digit span subtesst of working memory capacity from the woodcock-johnson test of cognitive abilities. and filled out a strength and difficulties questionnaire.
- Discussion - provides empirical evidence that watching a 9 minute episode of a fast-paced TV cartoon immediately impaired young children EF relative to watching an educational TV show or drawing, performed worse than others. This result is consistent with others showing long-term negative associations between entertainment TV and attention.
- There is no such circuitry for new and unexpected events which fantasical events often are. Encoding new events is likely to be particularly depleting of cognitive resources.
- Limitations - cannot tell exactly what features of the fast-paced TV cartoon created the effects. only 4 year olds were tested older children might not be negatively influenced by fast-paced TV. do not know how long the negative effects persist or what the long-term effects of habitual viewing include. Only used 9 min of viewing many childrens cartoon episodes last 11 minutes and typically 2 episodes are shown in a one-half hour programming slot.
- Strengths - blind posttester - blindness is not crucial but good. The use of a range of EF tests was also an asset.
- Conclusion - children watch a great deal of TV and it has been associated with long-term attention problems. TV immediately impaired 4 year olds.
- Which of the following statements is FALSE? Liliard and Peterson’s (2011) study (as depicted in the graphs) demonstrated that: (C)
a). Watching a fast-paced cartoon (SpongeBob Squarepants) reduced ability to delay gratification
b). Watching a faced paced cartoon (SpongeBob Squarepants) reduced scores on all executive function (EF) tasks
c). Watching an educational video resulted in improvements on all executive function (EF) tasks.
d). All of the above
- According to Meadows (2017): (A)
a) Hours of watching tv negatively correlates with cognitive development
b) Hours of watching tv positively correlates with cognitive development
c) Hours of watching tv negatively correlates with behavior problems.
d) There is a clear relationship between tv noise and behavior.
- _____ executive functions are activated in emotive or heightened social situations and can be measured by____. (C)
a) Cool; abstract tasks
b) Hot; abstract tasks
c) Hot; delay of gratification
d) Cool; delay of gratification
- Huber et al.’s (2018) study compared the impact of; non-educational cartoons, an education video and an educational app on hot and cold EF. What did the authors find? (B)
a) There were no differences in delay of gratification for either the cartoon or educational TV show.
b) Playing an educational app had beneficial effects on children’s hot EF performance.
c) Playing an educational app had beneficial effects on children’s cool EF performance
d) All of the above
- Which of the following statements is TRUE? (B)
a) Lilaird and Peterson measured baseline EF and EF following different activities
b) Huber and colleagues measured baseline EF and EF following different activities
c) Liliard and Peterson measured baseline EF only
d) Huber and colleagues measured EF following different activities only
The effects of screen media content on young children’s executive functioning (Links to an external site.) (Huber et al., 2018, pp. 72–85) is a study of 96 2- and 3-year-old children who completed executive functioning measures of working memory and response inhibition and task switching before and after a brief screen intervention. You will gain an insight into how the type of screen intervention affects executive functioning performance and the role of interactivity and content.
Reason for the paper - to examine how different types of screen media expereinces immediately affect young childrens executive functioning (EF)
- Executive functions refer to higher order cognitive processes responsible for mediating goal directing behaviour, including, self-regulation, working, memory, inhibition and attention.
- Hot EFs are activated in emotive or heightened social situations and are typically measured by tasks with an extrinsic reward such as delay of gratification.
- Cold EFs are emotionally neutral cognitive skills typically assessed by more abstract tasks
- the nature of TV content and the amount of screen time exposure have been shown to affect childrens EF.
- Childrens exposed to high levels of adult-directed TV both 12 months and 4 years had poorer EF scores at 4 years age. High levels of TV were associated with poorer EF.
- more recently childrens tv viewing was further teased apart. Parental records of house hold TV use reported TV duration, channels and programs watched.
- In addition to correlational studies, experimental research has shown that particular TV content can have immediate effects on childrens EF.
- Children who watched a fast-paced fantasical cartoon performed significantly worse on cool EF tasks compared with children who were engaged in free play for the same amount of time.
- Another experiment was conducted to disentangle the influence of TV pace and content on 4 year olds EF
- changes in auditory working memory performance were examined separately and were consistent with the post-test EF results; children who watched realistic content had improved working memory scores, whereas working memory declined for those who watched fantastical content.
- these studies indicated that when considering noninteractive video content is an important piece in the puzzle of determining best practices for childlessness media use.
- Because Lillard and Peterson 2011, found the effects of educational TV programming appreared to sit somewhere between those of drawing and those of cartoon viewing , we reasoned that our observational educational video would have effects somewhere between those of educational apps and those of cartoons.
- in addition, it was examined how the order of tasks might affect EF performance and sought to clarify how various media activities influence EF, so that parents, educators and policymakers can make better informed decisions for screen use and activity selection for children
- Method - 96 children aged 24 - 48 months
- Materials - EF measures (the spin the pots task), Reverse cateforizztion (sort objects congruently and incongruently), Gift delay, screen intervention (Shiny Party, Penguins of Madagascar, Spongebob squarepants, sesame street)
- Procedure - watched cartoons, spin the pots, reverse categorization, spin the pots, gift delay and survey.
- Coding - conducted from video by a trained coder
- ANOVA
- Discussion: the key finding of this study was that, relative to watching a cartoon, playing with an educational app had beneficial effects on childrens subsequent hot and cool EF performance. This finding was consistent in two of the 3 measures of EF assessed.
- Hot EF Performnace - results showed that children were sigificantly more liekly to delay gratification after playing the educational app, than after viewing the cartoon. The research findings of the current study suggest that hot EF performance may be hindered by observational noneducational video, whereas interactive educational apps do not pose such detriment.
- Cool EF Performance - results showed that under certain circumstances screen medica content also affected childrens cool EF, specifically working memory ability. - supports how interactivity may influence the relationship between fantastical or real events and childrens cool EF, specifically inhibitory control. - any potentially negative effects of fantastical elements in the EDUAPP may have been mitigated by the process of interaction.
- Working memory and task order - experiment had the unexpected finding that spin the pots performance was significantly influence by task order. Another possibility is that because many of the children found the spin the pots task quiet easy to perform the task was most senseitive to the intervention condition when the children experienced some cognitive fatigure.
- Spatial content considerations - should be addressed in future work - - the elements of spatial learning encouraged by the app are quite distinct from the spatial skills involved in completing the spin the pots task. A key activity in the shiny party app is drawing and colouring shapes. Therefore rather than the spatial nature of the app, our results are perhaps better explained by the process of interacting in general
- Reverse Categorization - unexpected finding was that there was no clear effect of media type on 2 and 3 year olds response inhibition and task switching performance as measured by the reverse categorization tasks. There were significant number of participants performing at near-ceiling levels during base line testing, indicating that the task might not have provided nough of a challenge to the children reducing the measures sensitivity to media effects on EF. Also, because the children were exposed to the task during the baseline phase, this may have incoulated them to an extent, to negative EF effects of the media intervention on the test trial.
- Key implications and future directions - the current findings extend our undertsanding of media effects of EF in children in a number of ways. Our study sheds light on how screen media experiences affect hot and cool EF in a younger cohort of children than had previously been tesed.. Second, we tested childrens baseline performance on both of the cool EF tasks used in our study, it is notable that most of the work inspired the current study combined performance from multiple tasks into a composite measure of executive functioning.
- Decades of research on childrens TV has revealed that particular content and features can eaffect development outcomes including EF.
- Future research should also investigate media effects on EF examining children with more diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.
- implications of our findings include a better understanding of how we can measure and analyze young childrens executive function abilities to practical applications for guiding childrens media examine the effects of other types of screen media content.
