Designing and using digital books for learning: The informative case of young children and video

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2016.12.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Research on children’s learning from video can inform the development of e-books.

  • Very young children learn better from direct experience than from screen media.

  • The youngest viewers need support to learn from video and touchscreens.

  • Responsive social partners and select built-in features both support learning.

Abstract

To promote young children’s learning from screen-based digital books, parents, educators, researchers, and designers might productively consult research about very young children’s learning from another screen-based medium: video. This extensive literature reveals challenges to young children’s learning from digital screens that extend from infancy throughout the preschool years. The youngest viewers learn better watching real events “face to face” than they do watching video, and have trouble transferring information from a screen to the real world. Supports for learning include particular experiences, active mediation by social partners, and select built-in features. Each support is reviewed in regard to its potential relevance to digital books.

Section snippets

Learning from video: not easy for young viewers

To adults, watching sports or a current event on video is much like really being there  [8]. We can learn to make a gourmet dish from watching a cooking show or improve our golf swing via an instructional video. What we see on the screen, we can apply in the real world; that is, adults can transfer what they learn from a representation to their own lives  [9]. The connection between video and the real world may seem so obvious, we lose sight of the fact that videos (and still pictures) are

Experiences that promote learning

Thinking about the experience that young children have with video, it may not be so strange that they do not reliably use it as an information source. On the screen, animals talk and wear clothes, and objects violate the law of gravity—in other words, the world on the screen does not reflect the aspects of real life that infants are beginning to form concepts about  [39]. For this reason, the youngest viewers may be conservative about learning from video  [40]. If this is so, giving children

Social support increases attentiveness and learning

The previous paragraph alludes to another important factor that helps young viewers learn from video: social support. Even simple scaffolds by adults can support learning: 2-year-olds learned a new word from a video when their parents provided two one-sentence scaffolds linking the objects on screen with the real objects in the room  [26]. Children who watched without parent support showed no evidence of applying the label to the objects.

Three possible mechanisms through which parent

Repetition of content

Besides helpful external supports from people and the environment, some support for learning can be built into the digital product itself. Since representations such as video images (or pictures on touchscreens) are 2-dimensional and difficult for children to connect to the real world, young children may need longer to process the information. Brain-imaging research with event-related potentials (ERPs) indicates that during the attention process, toddlers (18-month-olds) recognize a

Parasocial relationships

One effect of children’s repeated exposure to educational programming has been the development of what are called parasocial relationships: “emotionally tinged relationships with media characters that parallel real social relationships”  [54, p. 1]. According to the research of Calvert and her colleagues, these enduring attachments stem from repeated interactions with a media character that acts social by asking questions and pausing for a response, along with parent encouragement and

Contingent responsiveness

True responsiveness with an on-screen person is possible when using a recently developed technology: video chat. Children between 1 and 5 years of age played and interacted with their parent on a video feed in the same way they did when the parent was physically present and seemed to draw comfort from their parent’s “presence” via video feed  [58], [59]. In other research, children learned better from video when a researcher on screen offered live, contingent responses (e.g., played “Simon

Attention-directing versus attention-distracting features

As interactivity is built into e-books, giving thought to the kind of interactivity is vital. According to previous research, the enhancements included in an e-book may determine the extent to which it promotes or distracts from learning. Research with video has shown that preschool children orient their attention to the screen following sound effects and character vocalizations  [64]. Placing attention-grabbing auditory features just before important content helped 4-year-olds attend to and

Conclusion

For very young children, learning from digital media holds both challenges and promise. Research indicates that young children sometimes find it difficult to learn from video and touchscreens. Experiences that clarify the relation between screen and reality, social scaffolding, repetition of content, encouraging parasocial relationships, contingent responsiveness from individuals on the screen, and attention-directing audio and video features all support learning.

Built-in supports and those

References (72)

  • C. Chiong, J. Ree, L. Takeuchi, I. Erickson, Print books vs e-books. Comparing parent-child co-reading on print, basic...
  • A. Biemiller

    Teaching vocabulary in primary grades: Vocabulary instruction needed

  • O. Korat et al.

    Do Hebrew electronic books differ from Dutch electronic books? A replication of a Dutch content analysis

    J. Comput. Assist. Learn.

    (2004)
  • L. Guernsey, M. Levine, C. Chiong, M. Severns, Pioneering literacy in the digital wild west: Empowering parents and...
  • Z.K. Takacs et al.

    Benefits and pitfalls of multimedia and interactive features in technology-enhanced storybooks: A meta-analysis

    Rev. Educ. Res.

    (2015)
  • H. Hirsh-Pasek et al.

    Putting education in “educational” apps: Lessons from the science of learning

    Psychol. Sci. Public Interest

    (2015)
  • S.M. Barnett et al.

    When and where do we apply what we learn?: A taxonomy for far transfer

    Psychol. Bull.

    (2002)
  • G.L. Troseth et al.

    From the innocent to the intelligent eye: The early development of pictorial competence

  • K. Schmitt et al.

    Television and reality: Toddlers’ use of visual information from video to guide behavior

    Media Psychol.

    (2002)
  • G.L. Troseth et al.

    The medium can obscure the message: Young children’s understanding of video

    Child Dev.

    (1998)
  • J.A. Deocampo et al.

    When seeing is not believing: Two-year-olds’ use of video representations to find a hidden toy

    J. Cogn. Dev.

    (2005)
  • R. Barr et al.

    Developmental changes in imitation from television during infancy

    Child Dev.

    (1999)
  • R. Barr et al.

    Age-related changes in deferred imitation from television by 6- to 18-month-olds

    Dev. Sci.

    (2007)
  • R.B. McCall et al.

    Imitation of live and televised models by children one to three years of age

    Monogr. Soc. Res. Child Dev.

    (1977)
  • P.K. Kuhl et al.

    Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction of phonetic learning

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.

    (2003)
  • S. Roseberry et al.

    Live action: Can young children learn verbs from video?

    Child Dev.

    (2009)
  • P. Bronson, A. Merryman, Baby Einstein vs. Barbie, 2006. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1538507,00.html...
  • J.S. DeLoache et al.

    Do babies learn from baby media?

    Psychol. Sci.

    (2010)
  • M.B. Robb et al.

    Just a talking book? Word learning from watching baby videos

    Br. J. Dev. Psychol.

    (2009)
  • E.A. Vandewater

    Infant word learning from commercially available video in the US

    J. Child. Media

    (2011)
  • M. Krcmar et al.

    Can toddlers learn vocabulary from television? An experimental approach

    Media Psychol.

    (2007)
  • D.L. Linebarger et al.

    Infants’ and toddlers’ television viewing and language outcomes

    Am. Behav. Sci.

    (2005)
  • K.D. O’Doherty et al.

    Third-party social interaction and word learning from video

    Child Dev.

    (2011)
  • J. Scofield et al.

    Word learning in the absence of a speaker

    First Lang.

    (2007)
  • S. Yuan et al.

    “Really? She blicked the baby?” Two-year-olds learn combinatorial facts about verbs by listening

    Psychol. Sci.

    (2009)
  • S. Dayanim et al.

    Infants learn baby signs from video

    Child Dev.

    (2015)
  • Cited by (0)

    1

    Fax: +1 605 677 5438.

    View full text