How Does Joint Media Engagement Affect the Development of Executive Functions in 5- to-7 year-old Children?

Background

Executive functions are actively developing in children of preschool age. Executive functions' development is also influenced by the way children are using digital devices. Joint media engagement is one of the parameters of digital device usage that has been poorly studied so far, although this is of great importance from the point of view of cultural-historical psychology.

Objective

Our research aimed to explore the association between young children's development of executive functions over a year, and their joint media engagement with parents and siblings in preschool children.

Design

Four hundred ninety (490) typically developing children (52% of them were boys) participated in the study. It was a longitudinal study: during the first stage, the children were 5-6 years old; the second stage followed one year later. The NEPSY-II subtests (Inhibition, Statue, Memory for Designs, Sentences Repetition) and the Dimensional Change Card Sort were used to assess executive functions. A questionnaire for mothers was used to get information about the children's joint media engagement and screen time.

Results

Children who watched video content and played video games together with their siblings developed more inhibitory control over the year than those children who did it alone. Co-viewing of video content with parents was associated with a decrease in cognitive flexibility over the year, as opposed to watching it alone.

Conclusion

The obtained data allows us to conclude that joint media engagement is important for executive functions development, and that there are optimal formats of joint media engagement. Based on the limitations of this study, recommendations for future research were suggested.

Growing Up in a Digital World Digital Media and the Association With the Child's Language Development at Two Years of Age

Digital media (DM), such as cellphones and tablets, are a common part of our daily lives and their usage has changed the communication structure within families. Thus, there is a risk that the use of DM might result in fewer opportunities for interactions between children and their parents leading to fewer language learning moments for young children. The current study examined the associations between children’s language development and early DM exposure.

Participants: Ninety-two parents of 25months olds (50 boys/42 girls) recorded their home sound environment during a typical day [Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA)] and participated in an online questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to daily DM use and media mediation strategies, as well as a Swedish online version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, which includes a vocabulary scale as well as a grammar and pragmatics scale.

Results: Through correlations and stepwise regressions three aspects of language were analyzed. The child’s vocabulary was positively associated with interactional turn-taking. The child’s vocabulary and grammar were negatively associated with the likelihood of parent’s device use during everyday child routines and the amount of TV watched by the child. The child’s pragmatic development was also positively associated with the parent’s device use in child routines but also with the parent’s joint media engagement (JME), as well as the child’s gender (where girls perform better).

Conclusion: Our study confirms that specific aspects of the 2-year old’s DM environment are associated with the child’s language development. More TV content, whether it is viewed on a big screen or tablet, is negatively associated with language development. The likelihood of parents’ use of DM during everyday child routines is also negatively associated with the child’s language development. Positive linguistic parental strategies such as interactional turn-taking with the child, JME, and book reading, on the other hand, are positively associated with the child’s language development.

2-Year-Olds Learning From 2D Media With and Without Parental Support: Comparing Two Forms of Joint Media Engagement With Passive Viewing and Learning From 3D

The study investigates to what degree two different joint media engagement (JME) strategies affect children’s learning from two-dimensional (2D)-media. More specifically, we expected an instructed JME strategy to be more effective than a spontaneous, non-instructed, JME strategy. Thirty-five 2-year old children saw a short video on a tablet demonstrating memory tasks together with a parent. The parents were randomized into two groups: One group (N = 17) was instructed to help their child by describing the actions they saw on the video while the other group (N = 18) received no specific instruction besides “do as you usually do.” The parents in the instructed group used significantly more words and verbs when supporting their child but both groups of children did equally well on the memory test. In a second step, we compared the performance of the two JME groups with an opportunistic comparison group (N = 95) tested with half of the memory tasks live and half of the tasks on 2D without any JME support. Results showed that the JME intervention groups received significantly higher recall scores than the no JME 2D comparison group. In contrast, the three-dimensional (3D) comparison group outperformed both JME groups. In sum, our findings suggest that JME as implemented here is more effective in promoting learning than a no JME 2D demonstration but less so than the standard 3D presentation of the tasks.

Characteristics of Children's Media Use and Gains in Language and Literacy Skills

Media use could be detrimental to children's language and literacy skills because it may displace other language-enhancing activities like shared reading and caregiver-child interactions. Furthermore, the extent to which children use media with adults (joint media engagement), the extent to which they use interactive media (apps/games), and the time of the day and week during which media use occurs may attenuate any negative effects. The current study examines the relation between characteristics of children's media use and gains in first graders' language and literacy skills. Children (N = 488) completed direct assessments of language and literacy skills in the spring of kindergarten and the spring of first grade. Parents reported how many hours children used both interactive and non-interactive media during different times of the day on the most recent weekday and weekend day and responded to items about the extent to which they engage with their children during media use. A quadratic relationship between media use and language gains showed that a moderate amount of media use was related to larger language gains, whereas high use was related to smaller gains. For literacy, an interaction between media use and joint media engagement showed a small negative effect of media use at low levels of joint media engagement and little to no relation between media use and literacy gains at higher levels of joint media engagement. Children's language and literacy skills were not predicted by either the proportion of media time that was spent with apps/games or morning and weekday media use. These results show that moderate amounts of media use may not be a negative influence on children's developing language skills, whereas high levels may displace other language-enhancing activities. Additionally, joint media engagement may play an important buffering role in the relation between media use and early literacy skills, aligned with current recommendations encouraging co-viewing.

Beyond Screen Time: A Synergistic Approach to a More Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure During Early Childhood

Digital media availability has surged over the past decade. Because of a lack of comprehensive measurement tools, this rapid growth in access to digital media is accompanied by a scarcity of research examining the family media context and sociocognitive outcomes. There is also little cross-cultural research in families with young children. Modern media are mobile, interactive, and often short in duration, making them difficult to remember when caregivers respond to surveys about media use. The Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure (CAFE) Consortium has developed a novel tool to measure household media use through a web-based questionnaire, time-use diary, and passive-sensing app installed on family mobile devices. The goal of developing a comprehensive assessment of family media exposure was to take into account the contextual factors of media use and improve upon the limitations of existing self-report measures, while creating a consistent, scalable, and cost-effective tool. The CAFE tool captures the content and context of early media exposure and addresses the limitations of prior media measurement approaches. Preliminary data collected using this measure have been integrated into a shared visualization platform. In this perspective article, we take a tools-of-the-trade approach (Oakes, 2010) to describe four challenges associated with measuring household media exposure in families with young children: measuring attitudes and practices; capturing content and context; measuring short bursts of mobile device usage; and integrating data to capture the complexity of household media usage. We illustrate how each of these challenges can be addressed with preliminary data collected with the CAFE tool and visualized on our dashboard. We conclude with future directions including plans to test reliability, validity, and generalizability of these measures.

Beyond Screen Time: A Synergistic Approach to a More Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure During Early Childhood

Digital media availability has surged over the past decade. Because of a lack of comprehensive measurement tools, this rapid growth in access to digital media is accompanied by a scarcity of research examining the family media context and sociocognitive outcomes. There is also little cross-cultural research in families with young children. Modern media are mobile, interactive, and often short in duration, making them difficult to remember when caregivers respond to surveys about media use. The Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure (CAFE) Consortium has developed a novel tool to measure household media use through a web-based questionnaire, time-use diary, and passive-sensing app installed on family mobile devices. The goal of developing a comprehensive assessment of family media exposure was to take into account the contextual factors of media use and improve upon the limitations of existing self-report measures, while creating a consistent, scalable, and cost-effective tool. The CAFE tool captures the content and context of early media exposure and addresses the limitations of prior media measurement approaches. Preliminary data collected using this measure have been integrated into a shared visualization platform. In this perspective article, we take a tools-of-the-trade approach (Oakes, 2010) to describe four challenges associated with measuring household media exposure in families with young children: measuring attitudes and practices; capturing content and context; measuring short bursts of mobile device usage; and integrating data to capture the complexity of household media usage. We illustrate how each of these challenges can be addressed with preliminary data collected with the CAFE tool and visualized on our dashboard. We conclude with future directions including plans to test reliability, validity, and generalizability of these measures.

Characteristics of Children's Media Use and Gains in Language and Literacy Skills

Media use could be detrimental to children's language and literacy skills because it may displace other language-enhancing activities like shared reading and caregiver-child interactions. Furthermore, the extent to which children use media with adults (joint media engagement), the extent to which they use interactive media (apps/games), and the time of the day and week during which media use occurs may attenuate any negative effects. The current study examines the relation between characteristics of children's media use and gains in first graders' language and literacy skills. Children (N = 488) completed direct assessments of language and literacy skills in the spring of kindergarten and the spring of first grade. Parents reported how many hours children used both interactive and non-interactive media during different times of the day on the most recent weekday and weekend day and responded to items about the extent to which they engage with their children during media use. A quadratic relationship between media use and language gains showed that a moderate amount of media use was related to larger language gains, whereas high use was related to smaller gains. For literacy, an interaction between media use and joint media engagement showed a small negative effect of media use at low levels of joint media engagement and little to no relation between media use and literacy gains at higher levels of joint media engagement. Children's language and literacy skills were not predicted by either the proportion of media time that was spent with apps/games or morning and weekday media use. These results show that moderate amounts of media use may not be a negative influence on children's developing language skills, whereas high levels may displace other language-enhancing activities. Additionally, joint media engagement may play an important buffering role in the relation between media use and early literacy skills, aligned with current recommendations encouraging co-viewing.