Influence of a Character-Based App on Children's Learning of Nutritional Information: Should Apps Be Served with a Side of Media Characters?

Abstract

Objective: Childhood obesity is a health issue in the United States, associated with marketing practices in which media characters are often used to sell unhealthy products. This study examined exposure to a socially contingent touch-screen gaming app, which replied immediately, reliably, and accurately to children's actions. Children's recall of nutritional content and their liking of the character were assessed.Materials and Methods: Four- and five-year-old children (N = 114) received no-exposure, single-exposure, or repeated-exposure to a character-based iPad app rewarding healthy and penalizing unhealthy behaviors. Children reported how much they liked the character and recalled healthy and unhealthy items from the app. An ordinary least squares regression was conducted on how much children liked the character by condition. Poisson regressions were conducted on the number of items recalled by condition alone, and in an interacted model of treatment condition by liking the character.Results: Children liked the character more in the repeated app-exposure condition than in the control group (P = 0.018). Children in the repeated and single app-exposure conditions recalled more healthy (P < 0.001) and unhealthy (P < 0.001) items than the control group. Within treatment conditions, liking the character increased recall of healthy items in the single app-exposure compared to the repeated app-exposure condition (P = 0.005).Conclusions: Results revealed that repeated exposure increased children's learning of nutritional information and liking of the character. The results contribute to our understanding of how to deliver effective nutrition information to young children in a new venue, a gaming app.

Digital Gaming for Nutritional Education: A Survey on Preferences, Motives, and Needs of Children and Adolescents

“…Therefore, different types of quizzes should be considered in the development of a nutrition game [42]. A recent study in children investigated the delivery of nutritional information through a gaming app and demonstrated that learning of nutritional information was improved with repeated exposure [43]. To convey knowledge effectively through a game, different elements should be considered in the game design [42].…”

Apps As Learning Tools: A Systematic Review

“…In 1 study, researchers found no difference in learning facts about animals between an interactive app group and a group receiving inperson instruction, 58 whereas researchers in another found the app group learned more about healthy foods compared with a no-treatment control. 59 In a third study, researchers found that older preschoolers (4.5-5.5 years) learned about the growth cycle better from interactive app play compared with noninteractive video instruction, but younger preschoolers (3-4.5 years) were not able to learn in either condition. 62…”

Jogos Educativos Na Prevenção Da Obesidade Em Crianças E Adolescentes: Uma Revisão Sistemática Da Literatura

“…A avaliação da qualidade do estudo revelou que 17% dos estudos foram classificados como forte (Baranowski et al, 2003;Baranowski et al, 2011), 33% como moderado (Baños et al, 2012;Sharma et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2017;Hermans et al, 2018) e 50% como fraco (Turnin et al, 2001;Schneider et al, 2012;Majumdar et al, 2013;Putnam et al, 2018;Sen et al, 2018;Viggiano et al, 2018). O Quadro 2 descreve a qualidade de cada área dos estudos selecionados.…”

“…A ocultação de alocação (viés de seleção) foi classificada como alto risco de viés em 7 estudos (Viggiano et al, 2018;Sharma et al, 2015;Schneider et al, 2012;Majumdar et al, 2013;Hermans et al, 2018;Baranowski et al, 2003;Baños et al, 2012), baixo risco em 4 estudos (Turnin et al, 2001;Sen et al, 2018;Putnam et al, 2018;Baranowski et al, 2011) e 1 com risco incerto (Wang et al, 2017) . Todos os estudos foram classificados como baixo risco de viés para o cegamento de participantes e pessoal (viés de desempenho) e para relatos seletivos (viés de relato).…”