What they can and cannot: A meta-analysis of research on touch and multi-touch gestures by two to seven-year-olds

Samarakoon, Uthpala; Usoof, Hakim; Halloluwa, Thilina

doi:10.1016/j.ijcci.2019.100151

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Finally, it is important to note that the children engaged in both of the app activities in the presence of an adult who guided their performance and kept their attention focused on the task. This scaffolding has been critical to toddlers' successful learning from traditional, non-interactive screen media (see Barr, 2019) and is likely also the case for interactive devices (Samarakoon et al, 2019). Though not tested in the current study, Walter-Laager et al (2016) found that 23-to 31month-old toddlers who used a word-learning app scaffolded by an adult, had a larger vocabulary gain than those who used the app alone.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…Comparable gestural, manual, and navigational skills have been reported in the few other studies that included toddlers (Aziz et al, 2014;Ahearne et al, 2015;Hourcade et al, 2015;Nacher and Jaen, 2015;Samarakoon et al, 2019). Some included the more difficult gestures for toddlers to execute such as dragand-drop, but also free rotate and pinch and stretch to resize.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…First, there is little information on just how effectively toddlers can operate an interactive touchscreen device. Observations indicate that they are highly attentive to screens and seem able to tap, drag, and swipe to activate simple features even before they have fully developed fine motor control (Aziz et al, 2014;Ahearne et al, 2015;Hourcade et al, 2015;Nacher and Jaen, 2015;Bedford et al, 2016;Samarakoon et al, 2019;Souto et al, 2020). However, random touching and tapping to produce any interesting effect might developmentally precede deliberate, purposeful activation of an app or feature to achieve a specific goal (Adolph and Franchak, 2017).…”

Section: Toward Resolving Some Basic Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this has not been examined using commercially available educational apps. This gap is significant as many apps in the marketplace target toddlers, often with unsubstantiated claims of their potential for learning (Shuler, 2012;Samarakoon et al, 2019). Toddlers may be especially vulnerable as they have more difficulty in learning from screens than from a "live" or a concrete equivalent source.…”

Section: Overview Of the Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Toddlers Using Tablets: They Engage, Play, and Learn

et al. 2021

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Although very young children have unprecedented access to touchscreen devices, there is limited research on how successfully they operate these devices for play and learning. For infants and toddlers, whose cognitive, fine motor, and executive functions are immature, several basic questions are significant: (1) Can they operate a tablet purposefully to achieve a goal? (2) Can they acquire operating skills and learn new information from commercially available apps? (3) Do individual differences in executive functioning predict success in using and learning from the apps? Accordingly, 31 2-year-olds (M = 30.82 month, SD = 2.70; 18 female) were compared with 29 3-year-olds (M = 40.92 month, SD = 4.82; 13 female) using two commercially available apps with different task and skill requirements: (1) a shape matching app performed across 3 days, and (2) a storybook app with performance compared to that on a matched paper storybook. Children also completed (3) the Minnesota Executive Functioning Scale. An adult provided minimal scaffolding throughout. The results showed: (1) toddlers could provide simple goal-directed touch gestures and the manual interactions needed to operate the tablet (2) after controlling for prior experience with shape matching, toddlers’ increased success and efficiency, made fewer errors, decreased completion times, and required less scaffolding across trials, (3) they recognized more story content from the e-book and were less distracted than from the paper book, (4) executive functioning contributed unique variance to the outcome measures on both apps, and (5) 3-year-olds outperformed 2-year-olds on all measures. The results are discussed in terms of the potential of interactive devices to support toddlers’ learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%