Preschool screen-media usage predicts mental imagery two years later

Abstract

During typical childhood interactions with screen-media, two features are prominent. First, input is dominated by audio-visual signals and second, these predominately provide children with ready-made images, potentially negating effortful mental imagery construction. We present a two-year longitudinal study on a sample of 109 preschool children. We endeavoured to measure media usage and mental imagery development in a differentiated manner, also taking account of control variables and purpose of media use (learning vs. entertainment). Results indicated that children who viewed more media had worse mental imagery skill. Active media usage (e.g. gaming, tablets) and total screen time linked to lower mental imagery performance. Further, both mental images in the visual and haptic modalities appeared equally affected. Findings are discussed in terms of shaping early educational experiences with respect to virtual and three dimensional reality.

Does it kill the imagination dead? The effect of film versus reading on mental imagery.

“…The contrast to reading is particularly important because reading involves perceiving abstract symbols that perceptually have nothing to do with the images they represent. To date, only one study has tested whether mental imagery is affected by screen-media (Suggate & Martzog, 2020, 2022). The authors measured mental imagery using an MCT across 2 years on a sample of 266 children aged between 3 and 9.…”

“…Further, such measures refer to broad abilities to develop rich mental simulations of scenes and events, whereas we know little about more front-end sensorimotor images that form the building blocks of more complex imagery (Brogaard & Gatzia, 2017; Pearson, 2019) and are more likely to relate to stimulus differences inherent in films versus texts (Magliano et al, 2013). Additionally, it appears that the effect of viewing films on mental imagery (Suggate & Martzog, 2022; Valkenburg & van der Voort, 1995), and in turn that of reading on mental imagery (Suggate & Lenhard, 2022), are subtle, requiring long periods of time.…”