Tablet and Smartphone or a Book: The Struggle Between Digital Media and Literacy Environment in Homes of Croatian Preschool Children and Its Effect on Letter Recognition

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between the amount of time that preschool children, aged 6-7 years, spend using a tablet or a smartphone for entertainment purposes, aspects of their home literacy environment (HLE), and their letter recognition ability. Participants in the study were a convenient sample of 97 children (43 girls) aged 6-7 years and one of their parents, who agreed to participate in the research during the process of school readiness assessment. Children completed a letter recognition test, while parents filled out a questionnaire in which they gave estimates of the amount of time their child typically spends using a tablet or a smartphone for entertainment purposes during a typical week and completed a scale assessing their HLE. The results show that a smaller amount of time that children spend using a tablet or a smartphone for entertainment purposes during a typical week, higher education level of mothers, and more frequent parental engagement in interactive reading with children are positively related to children's letter recognition. However, more frequent interactive reading with the child was the only significant predictor of better letter recognition. The findings point to the importance of time spent using digital devices for entertainment purposes by preschool children, as well as the quality of their home environment, in literacy development.

Associations of smartphone and tablet use in early childhood with psychosocial, cognitive and sleep factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Only six studies (23%) examined the nature of a child's smartphone or tablet use (Cho & Lee, 2017;Kotrla Topić et al, 2020;Levine et al, 2019;Lin et al, 2020;Neumann, 2014;Taylor et al, 2017). These studies generally found that smartphones and tablets were most commonly used for non-educational purposes including watching videos (Cho & Lee, 2017;Levine et al, 2019), entertainment (Kotrla Topić et al, 2020Taylor et al, 2017) and gaming (Neumann, 2014).…”

Body–object interaction effect in word recognition and its relationship with screen time in Chinese children

“…Second, to exclude the influence of literacy knowledge, the current study only focused on screen time for entertainment purposes. However, screen time for learning purposes has been shown to account for a substantial part of children’s use of digital devices (Kotrla Topić et al, 2020 ; Sousa & Rocha, 2019 ). Investigations of screen time for learning purposes could deepen our understanding of the mechanisms of the role of screen time for different purposes in the BOI effect with children.…”

“…The parents’ education levels were measured on a 7-point scale: 1 = third grade or below, 2 = fourth grade to sixth grade, 3 = middle school, 4 = high school, 5 = college school, 6 = university, 7 = postgraduate. As well, the parents were asked to answer a question about the time (in minutes) their children spent using digital devices for entertainment purposes (e.g., playing games, searching the Internet, watching videos, or visiting social networks) on a typical day (Kotrla Topić et al, 2020 ; Neumann, 2018 ).…”

“…These controversial findings might have occurred because the purpose of using digital devices was not distinguished in these studies (Kotrla Topić et al, 2020 ). In general, when screen time is used for learning purposes, confounding factors, such as online instruction and other learning activities, may be involved (Neumann, 2018 ).…”

“…A recent study of screen time for entertainment purposes (Kotrla Topić et al, 2020 ) reported that it correlated negatively with letter recognition in English-speaking preschool students. Yet, it is not clear whether screen time for entertainment purposes influences the role of sensorimotor experiences in conceptual processing.…”