To Look, But Not to Learn: The Impact of Televised Formal Features on Attention and Comprehension of Infant Learning Paradigms
III, Marcos Sastre,
2011
- Young infants (under 2 years old) are widely underrepresented in media research, a fact that has spurned numerous debates on the effects of screen viewing on development. Past literature has indicated that the degree of perceptual salience on video is the most robust mediator of infant attention. Nevertheless, attention is not a reliable predictor of comprehension by itself; rather, the different ... read moreaudiovisual properties of the stimulus can have varying effects on processing information from a video source. The current study aims to isolate how formal features, 'syntactic' elements of design and production, affect attention and comprehension of video demonstrations on two forced choice imitation/search tasks. Infants were shown a series of six short video clips, each modified with one of four experimental conditions (two visual, two auditory): Cartoon Voice, Music, Visual Effects, Artificial Dynamics, and Music, and two control trials. Results indicated that unexpectedly, attention to the medium was high overall, with few condition effects (Hypothesis 1), but, as predicted, imposition of formal features resulted in poorer performance on all trials except the Cartoon Voice condition (Hypothesis 2). Condition differences were also observed for task performance, as expected (Hypothesis 3). These findings suggest that children are capable of learning from video, but this ability is markedly affected by the audiovisual conventions that often accompany commercial products. The implications of these findings in light of the controversies surrounding infant-direct media are discussed. Keywords: infants, media, attention, television, learning from video, formal featuresread less
- ID:
- jh344421q
- Component ID:
- tufts:UA005.006.129.00001
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
