The impact of touchscreen interactivity on U.S. toddlers’ selective attention and learning from digital media

ABSTRACT This study tested the extent to which the presence and relevance of interactive features influence toddlers’ visual attention and learning from videos. Two-year-olds (N = 88) watched an animated bear hide on video and then searched for a bear sticker on a corresponding felt board. To watch the bear hide, toddlers watched without touching the screen (non-interactive condition), touched a relevant part of the screen (the bear; relevant condition), or touched an irrelevant part of the screen (a star; irrelevant condition). A subset of 60 children (68%) wore a head-mounted eye-tracker to record their eye movements while watching the bear hide. A relevant touchscreen feature did not increase toddlers’ learning compared to non-interactive video, despite increasing toddlers’ visual attention to target information. Conversely, the irrelevant touchscreen feature had a positive effect on learning, particularly on later search trials. The findings are discussed with respect to toddlers’ mental representations of on-screen versus real-life events and implications for the design of touchscreen media for children. IMPACT SUMMARY a. Prior State of Knowledge: Toddlers learn less from video than from real-life experiences. It is widely believed that interactive media support toddlers’ learning, but research is mixed, sometimes finding neutral or even negative effects of interactivity compared to noninteractive video. b. Novel Contributions: A simple, relevant touchscreen feature increased toddlers’ encoding of target information but did not improve learning. Conversely, an irrelevant touchscreen feature improved toddlers’ learning, perhaps by increasing slightly the effort required to complete an otherwise simple task. c. Practical Implications: Interactive media do not always increase toddlers’ learning. Simple learning tasks may not benefit from simple interactivity. Instead, media creators may be able to maximize educational value by balancing the difficulty of the lesson with the complexity of media features.