Objective: To determine how children's attention to and learning from a computer story is affected by the amount of control they have over the program Design: Experimental design. Children interacted with computer storybook twice in each of two sessions with an adult (first session = 10 minutes, second session including comprehecontinued
Objective: To determine how children's attention to and learning from a computer story is affected by the amount of control they have over the program
Design: Experimental design. Children interacted with computer storybook twice in each of two sessions with an adult (first session = 10 minutes, second session including comprehension assessment = 20 minutes). Control group only completed comprehension assessment. Repeated measures ANOVA, ANCOVA, and follow-up analyses completed.
Subjects and Setting: 53 children (24 boys, 29 girls), mean age 4 years, 8 months (SD = 6 months), attending Washington, D.C., public primary school, private primary school, or private day care facility. Two sessions, twice in one week completed individually with an adult. 62% Caucasian, 9% Latino, 9% Asian, 8% African American, 6% Indian/Middle Eastern, 6% other mixed/unknown. Random assignment to one of four conditions - adult control, joint control, child control, no-exposure. Stimulus - online Nickelodeon Blue's Clues interactive storybook (Blue Is My Name) reprogrammed to include only central story content.
Intervention(s): N/A.
Outcome Measure(s): Visual attention, children's efforts to take control, pre-reading skill level (covariate), verbal vocabulary recognition, central story visual comprehension.
Results: Adult controlled and joint controlled conditions showed drop in visual attention when experiencing storybook for second time in each session, (Wilks's Lambda = 4.89, p<0.03, ??2=0.62 and Wilks's Lambda = 3.12, p<0.09, ??2=0.5 respectively). Attention difference particularly pronounced between story repetitions in second session for adult controlled condition. Child controlled condition exhibited no significant change in attention. Better readers, and boys in adult control condition, made more efforts to take control of the activity, F(1,37)=4.73, p<0.04 and F(1,37)=3.29, p<0.05 respectively. Boys recognized more visual story content than girls, F(1,44)=3.27, p<0.08. Better readers had better verbal vocabulary recognition, F(1,44)=4.61, p<0.04.
Conclusions: Children given more control over interactions with and exposure to computer-presented activities will be more likely to show interest in and pay more attention to the activity. © Center on Media and Child Healthreturn