Children are growing up in a digital age with increasing exposure to television and touchscreen devices. We tested whether exposure to screen media is associated with children's early language development. One hundred and thirty-one highly educated caregivers of UK children aged 6-36 months completed a media exposure questionnaire and vocabulary measure. 99% of children were read to daily, 82% watched television, and 49% used mobile touchscreen devices daily. Regression analyses revealed that time spent reading positively predicted vocabulary comprehension and production scores at 6-18 months, but time spent engaging with television or mobile touchscreen devices was not associated with vocabulary scores. Critically, correlations revealed that time spent reading or engaging with other non-screen activities was not offset by time spent engaging with television or mobile touchscreen devices. Thus, there was no evidence to suggest that screen media exposure adversely influenced vocabulary size in our sample of highly educated families with moderate media use. Children grow up surrounded by media including books, television, and more recently, mobile touchscreen devices. In a 2013 survey, television was the most popular medium with 31% of 0-2-year-old and 67% of 2-4-year-old American children watching television at least once a day for a total 44 and 64 min a day, respectively (Rideout, 2013). However, mobile touchscreen use among children appears to be increasing. In 2013 in the US, 6% of children under the age of 2 years were using mobile touchscreen devices, for 2 min per day on average (Rideout, 2013). In 2015 in France, 21% of children under the age of 2 years were using mobile touchscreen devices (Cristia & Seidl, 2015). On top of screen media exposure, children in the US under the age of 2 years also spend on average 19 min per day reading, and children aged 2-4 years spend around 29 min reading per day (Rideout, 2013). Time spent engaging with screen media impacts parent-child interactions. There is some evidence that screen time displaces time spent interacting with parents or doing other activities between 0 and 2 years of age (Vandewater, Bickham, & Lee, 2006). Specifically, Vandewater et al. (2006) found that children interacted with parents 52 mins less for each hour of time spent
In the present study, eye tracker methodology was used to explore whether there were age-related changes in the focus of infant attention during a learning event and subsequent recognition memory for event features. Six-and 9-month old infants watched a video of an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with an object while visual attention was recorded using an eye tracker. At both ages, attention was focused primarily on the object and person, with the background attended to for approximately 12% of their viewing time. Recognition memory for the person, object and background from the video was assessed immediately using a Visual Paired Comparison procedure. Despite focusing on the central features while watching the target video, infants showed only limited evidence of recognition memory for the individual components of the event. Taken together, these findings suggest that the early age-related changes in memory performance seen in the literature may not be the result of age-related changes in attentional focus during encoding. AbstractIn the present study, eye tracker methodology was used to explore whether there were agerelated changes in the focus of infant attention during a learning event and subsequent recognition memory for event features. Six-and 9-month old infants watched a video of an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with an object while visual attention was recorded using an eye tracker. At both ages, attention was focused primarily on the object and person, with the background attended to for approximately 12% of their viewing time. Recognition memory for the person, object and background from the video was assessed immediately using a Visual Paired Comparison procedure. Despite focusing on the central features while watching the target video, infants showed only limited evidence of recognition memory for the individual components of the event. Taken together, these findings suggest that agerelated changes in memory performance during the first year of life are unlikely to be the result of age-related changes in attentional focus during encoding.
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