Neuroscience
Designers of educational television for young children face a major stumbling block: two-year-old children tend to ignore information presented to them on a TV screen.
For example, in an initial study by Georgene Troseth and colleagues, two-year-olds told face-to-face where a toy was going to be hidden went and found it in the first place they looked 77 per cent of the time, whereas those told by the same researcher via a video-recording found the toy in the first place they looked just 27 per cent of the time.
Troseth’s team think this ‘video deficit’ is caused by the fact young children quickly learn to distinguish between video and reality, predisposing them to ignore information presented by someone on TV.
One way to overcome this could be to encourage children to see the person on TV as socially relevant. To test this, some two-year-olds interacted with a researcher over a live video-link for five minutes, playing games, chatting and singing songs. Later on, when the researcher appeared on a pre-recorded video telling the same children where she had hidden a toy, they went and found it in the first place they looked 69 per cent of the time. In contrast, a control group of children who hadn't interacted with the researcher over the live video-link earlier on, found the toy just 35 per cent of the time.
“Learning that a person on video was a social partner who could share relevant information eliminated the typical deficiency in two-year-olds’ acquisition and use of information from video”, the researchers said.
The finding has implications for the design of educational TV. “If social cues suggest that people on television are serving as conversational partners, children will be more likely to pay attention and learn” the researchers concluded, pointing to the example of Blues Clues as a programme that is “on the right track”.
__________________________________
Troseth, G.L., Saylor, M.M. & Archer, A.H. (2006). Young children’s use of video as a source of socially relevant information. Child Development, 77, 786-799.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- The Amazing Durability Of Infant Memory: Three-year-olds Show Recognition Of A Person They Met Once At Age One
The fate of our earliest memories is something of an enigma. As adults, most of us are unable to recall memories from before we were age three or four. And yet, as toddlers we are perfectly capable of storing and recalling memories from before that age....
- Children With Autism Are Immune To Contagious Yawning
Have you ever noticed that yawning is so contagious it can spread round a room like a Mexican wave? Scientists still aren't in agreement as to why this happens but one idea is that the phenomenon depends on our capacity for empathy. This finds support...
- Adults Are Unable To Tell When Children Are Lying
With their wide eyes and innocent hearts, you might think it's easy to tell when a child is lying. Oh no it isn't. Not according to Leif Stromwall and colleagues, who found adults were useless at detecting when children were lying. Thirty children...
- Helping Children By Teaching Them To Look Away
Teaching young children to look away while they are thinking could help improve their problem-solving abilities. Fiona Phelps and colleagues at Stirling University recruited 20 five-year-old children and videoed them while they answered a range of verbal...
- People Are Better Teachers Than Teletubbies
In this bit of startling news, Toddlers learn their first words better from people than from Teletubbies.But the initial comparison (discussed in the press release) wasn't between live Teletubbies and live people, or between televised Teletubbies...
Neuroscience
Educational TV must overcome young children's 'video deficit'
Designers of educational television for young children face a major stumbling block: two-year-old children tend to ignore information presented to them on a TV screen.For example, in an initial study by Georgene Troseth and colleagues, two-year-olds told face-to-face where a toy was going to be hidden went and found it in the first place they looked 77 per cent of the time, whereas those told by the same researcher via a video-recording found the toy in the first place they looked just 27 per cent of the time.
Troseth’s team think this ‘video deficit’ is caused by the fact young children quickly learn to distinguish between video and reality, predisposing them to ignore information presented by someone on TV.
One way to overcome this could be to encourage children to see the person on TV as socially relevant. To test this, some two-year-olds interacted with a researcher over a live video-link for five minutes, playing games, chatting and singing songs. Later on, when the researcher appeared on a pre-recorded video telling the same children where she had hidden a toy, they went and found it in the first place they looked 69 per cent of the time. In contrast, a control group of children who hadn't interacted with the researcher over the live video-link earlier on, found the toy just 35 per cent of the time.
“Learning that a person on video was a social partner who could share relevant information eliminated the typical deficiency in two-year-olds’ acquisition and use of information from video”, the researchers said.
The finding has implications for the design of educational TV. “If social cues suggest that people on television are serving as conversational partners, children will be more likely to pay attention and learn” the researchers concluded, pointing to the example of Blues Clues as a programme that is “on the right track”.
__________________________________
Troseth, G.L., Saylor, M.M. & Archer, A.H. (2006). Young children’s use of video as a source of socially relevant information. Child Development, 77, 786-799.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- The Amazing Durability Of Infant Memory: Three-year-olds Show Recognition Of A Person They Met Once At Age One
The fate of our earliest memories is something of an enigma. As adults, most of us are unable to recall memories from before we were age three or four. And yet, as toddlers we are perfectly capable of storing and recalling memories from before that age....
- Children With Autism Are Immune To Contagious Yawning
Have you ever noticed that yawning is so contagious it can spread round a room like a Mexican wave? Scientists still aren't in agreement as to why this happens but one idea is that the phenomenon depends on our capacity for empathy. This finds support...
- Adults Are Unable To Tell When Children Are Lying
With their wide eyes and innocent hearts, you might think it's easy to tell when a child is lying. Oh no it isn't. Not according to Leif Stromwall and colleagues, who found adults were useless at detecting when children were lying. Thirty children...
- Helping Children By Teaching Them To Look Away
Teaching young children to look away while they are thinking could help improve their problem-solving abilities. Fiona Phelps and colleagues at Stirling University recruited 20 five-year-old children and videoed them while they answered a range of verbal...
- People Are Better Teachers Than Teletubbies
In this bit of startling news, Toddlers learn their first words better from people than from Teletubbies.But the initial comparison (discussed in the press release) wasn't between live Teletubbies and live people, or between televised Teletubbies...