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The mean imitation scores (+1 SE) of 12-, 15-, and 18-month-old infants tested after a 24-hour delay as a function of demonstration group (live 3x or video 6x) in Experiment 1. The mean imitation score (+1 SE) of age-matched infants in the baseline control group is shown by the dark bar. An asterisk indicates that a test group exhibited significant deferred imitation (i.e. its mean imitation score was significantly > the mean test score of the baseline control group).
Source publication
During the second year of life, infants exhibit a video deficit effect. That is, they learn significantly less from a televised demonstration than they learn from a live demonstration. We predicted that repeated exposure to televised demonstrations would increase imitation from television, thereby reducing the video deficit effect. Independent grou...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... 12-month-olds there was a main effect of group, F (2, 33) = 5.21, p < .02. As shown in Figure 1, post-hoc Student Newman Kuhls tests (SNK, p < .05) showed that 12-month-olds in the live 3x and video 6x groups per- formed significantly above baseline and did not differ from one another. ...
Citations
... Nevertheless, imitation rates were quite low. In studies with toddlers between 15 and 21 months of age, imitation scores from videos were almost twice as high (Barr et al., 2007;Barr & Hayne, 1999). In both studies, however, the experiment was conducted in the toddlers' homes. ...
Theoretical Background: Although grandparents often play an important role in children’s lives, research is scarce on shared activities and the role of the adult’s age for toddler imitation. Objective: We tested whether there are differences in toddler imitation depending on the age of the adult. Moreover, descriptive data about the frequency of contact and shared activities were collected. Method: In total, 34 two-year-old toddlers were tested via video-chat. They watched either a video of a young female adult or an older female adult building a rattle. Toddlers had the opportunity to interact with the stimuli before and after the demonstration. Results: The 2 (phase: baseline, test) × 2 (condition: young adult model; older adult model) mixed-model ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for phase, but no significant interaction effect. Descriptive data of shared activities are reported. Discussion and Conclusion: Toddlers imitated both the young adult and the older adult model. Grandparents in the present sample frequently spent time with their grandchildren, suggesting an important role in toddlers’ lives.
... The video deficit effect, as described by Anderson and Pempek (2005), pertains to the limited ability of infants to transfer learning from television and static 2D images to real-life situations, particularly when compared to their ability to transfer learning from face-to-face interactions. This effect becomes noticeable around 15 months of age, reaches its peak, and persists until at least 36 months of age, varying slightly depending on the complexity of the task involved (Barr et al., 2007a;Barr et al., 2007b;Flynn & Whiten, 2008;Hayne, et al., 2003;Nielsen, et al., 2008;Sheffield & Hudson, 2006;Simcock & DeLoache, 2006;Simcock & Dooley, 2007). The non-apparent nature of the video deficit effect at 6 months of age is also worth noting. ...
... Several factors can be used to predict the potential for learning and improvement of the video deficit effect. These factors include the repetition of content (Barr et al., 2007a(Barr et al., , 2007b, the unique auditory and visual cues found in media (Barr et al., 2009), social contingency cues (or their absence; Nielsen et al., 2008;Troseth et al., 2006), the demands on working memory (Krcmar, Grela, & Lin, 2007;Suddendorf, 2003), and the perceptual demands of the specific task used to examine the transfer of learning (Barr & Hayne, 1999;Schmitt & Anderson, 2002;Suddendorf et al., 2007). When the cognitive load exceeds the processing abilities of young children, there is a rapid decline in the transfer of learning. ...
This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of 10 popular very young learner (VYL) videos on YouTube. The purpose of the study was to investigate the suitability of these videos for children aged 2-6 years in terms of their educational content, visual and auditory quality, and engagement value. Content analysis was used to analyze the videos. A total of 2 raters were conducted content analysis for the study. They were asked to rate each video on a rubric. The study concludes that careful consideration must be given when selecting videos for VYLs, as their effectiveness depends on several factors, such as age appropriateness, educational content, and visual and auditory quality. The results show that most YouTuber videos used multimedia learning principles effectively in their videos, with varying degrees of success.
... One additional important factor to consider is that analyses were only significant when we controlled for children's previous picture book experience. Repetition has been found to decrease the transfer deficit and likely improves encoding variability [e.g., 52,53]. A recent meta-analysis about the effect of training in joined picture book readings on language development found that the impact was moderated by intervention dosage, such as a lower dosage was associated with minimal impact. ...
Picture book reading is an enjoyable everyday activity for many young children with well-known benefits for language development. The present study investigated whether picture book reading can support young children's social-emotional development by providing a learning opportunity for the usage of emotion regulation strategies. Three-year-old children participated in two waiting situations designed to elicit negative affect. Between these waiting situations they read a picture book. In two experimental conditions, the book depicted how a protagonist (same-aged peer or young adult, respectively) waited for a desired object and distracted herself with toys while waiting. Children in an additional control condition read a picture book that was unrelated to waiting. Use of distraction did not differ between conditions. Parents often read picture book interactively with their children. Therefore, in an additional condition (Exp. 2), the experimenter read the picture book featuring the same-aged peer protagonist in an interactive way intended to facilitate transfer. Apart from the reading style, the design was identical to experiment 1. Experiment 2 intended to test whether changes in reading style lead to differences in three-year old children's social-emotional learning from picture books. When controlling for the children's picture book experience, children in the experimental conditions exhibited an increase in distraction in contrast to children in the control condition. In sum, results suggest that picture book reading could be an ecologically valid and versatile method for supporting 3-year-old children in their use of an age-appropriate adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as distraction.
... The video deficit effect, as described by Anderson and Pempek (2005), pertains to the limited ability of infants to transfer learning from television and static 2D images to real-life situations, particularly when compared to their ability to transfer learning from face-to-face interactions. This effect becomes noticeable around 15 months of age, reaches its peak, and persists until at least 36 months of age, varying slightly depending on the complexity of the task involved (Barr et al., 2007a;Barr et al., 2007b;Flynn & Whiten, 2008;Hayne, et al., 2003;Nielsen, et al., 2008;Sheffield & Hudson, 2006;Simcock & DeLoache, 2006;Simcock & Dooley, 2007). The non-apparent nature of the video deficit effect at 6 months of age is also worth noting. ...
... Several factors can be used to predict the potential for learning and improvement of the video deficit effect. These factors include the repetition of content (Barr et al., 2007a(Barr et al., , 2007b, the unique auditory and visual cues found in media (Barr et al., 2009), social contingency cues (or their absence; Nielsen et al., 2008;Troseth et al., 2006), the demands on working memory (Krcmar, Grela, & Lin, 2007;Suddendorf, 2003), and the perceptual demands of the specific task used to examine the transfer of learning (Barr & Hayne, 1999;Schmitt & Anderson, 2002;Suddendorf et al., 2007). When the cognitive load exceeds the processing abilities of young children, there is a rapid decline in the transfer of learning. ...
This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of 10 popular very young learner (VYL) videos on YouTube. The purpose of the study was to investigate the suitability of these videos for children aged 2-6 years in terms of their educational content, visual and auditory quality, and engagement value. Content analysis was used to analyze the videos. A total of 2 raters were conducted content analysis for the study. They were asked to rate each video on a rubric. The study concludes that careful consideration must be given when selecting videos for VYLs, as their effectiveness depends on several factors, such as age appropriateness, educational content, and visual and auditory quality. The results show that most YouTuber videos used multimedia learning principles effectively in their videos, with varying degrees of success.
... Although young children often may not learn as much from video as from live interactions (for reviews see Barr et al., 2007;Strouse & Samson, 2021), learning via video chat can be more effective than learning from a pre-recorded video (e.g., Myers et al., 2017;Troseth et al., 2006). ...
Grandparents who were separated from their infant grandchildren during COVID-19 sought other ways to connect, including video chat. Video chat supports learning, and its features (e.g., contingent responsiveness) may allow for cultural exchange. However, technological problems may disrupt these exchanges. In a seminaturalistic, longitudinal study, 47 families submitted up to three video chats and surveys. Families were predominantly White/Caucasian, highly educated, and lived between 1 and 2,700 miles apart. Multilevel models were used to predict the proportion of the sessions devoted to exchanging culture (e.g., holidays, parenting advice) and managing tech problems. Culture exchange did not change as a function of infant age, video chat experience, or when encountering tech problems. Although only marginally statistically significant, culture exchange increased as distance increased. Tech problems changed as a function of tech talk. Qualitative analysis revealed that cultural transmission occurred via a culture of care and sharing of information across video chat, that families adapted their behaviors to the new technology, and that technology disruptions rarely interfered with the flow of information. These findings demonstrate the ability to share culture when physically separated and in the presence of tech disruptions. Further, this study supports previous work on the emerging culture of video chat. Families adapted to being separated, and grandparents and infants successfully communicated through a new modality. Because video chat supports family relationships, equitable access to high-speed internet should be a priority to enable more families to use it.
... On the other hand, children may treat video or television images as real (the magic window account; Hawkins, 1977), for example, expecting images to have the same physical affordances as real objects (Pierroutsakos & Troseth, 2003;Rosengren et al., 2021). Although the video deficit is a welldocumented phenomenon at 6 to 18 months of age (e.g., Barr, 2013;Barr et al., 2007;Diener et al., 2008;Kremar et al., 2007;Troseth & DeLoache, 1998), some evidence suggests that children can learn from videos if elements of social contingency are retained (Myers et al., 2017;Nielsen et al., 2008;Roseberry et al., 2014). As such, extracting information through screens can be effective in scenarios that retain elements of a live social interaction. ...
From 10 months of age, human infants start to understand the function of the eyes in the looking behavior of others to the point where they preferentially orient toward an object if the social partner has open eyes rather than closed eyes. Thus far, gaze following has been investigated in controlled laboratory paradigms. The current study investigated this early ability using a remote live testing procedure, testing infants in their everyday environment while manipulating whether the experimenter could or could not see some target objects. A total of 32 11- and 12-month-old infants’ looking behavior was assessed, varying the experimenter’s eye status condition (open eyes vs closed eyes) in a between-participant design. Results showed that infants followed the gaze of a virtual social partner and that they preferentially followed open eyes rather than closed eyes. These data generalize past laboratory findings to a noisier home environment and demonstrate gaze processing capacities of infants to a virtual partner interacting with the participants in a live setup.
... If at the age of 6 months, the child manages to imitate an action equally well if it is presented in a video recording or live, the same does not happen after the age of 1 year when the video deficit appears (Barr, Muentener, Garcia, 2007). Basically, the child does not perceive the content displayed on a screen as real. ...
Despite the novelty and excitement of the promise that technology will revolutionize education, as it has revolutionized many other fields (medicine, industries), programs in recent years have shown that technology alone does not have the power to change education for the better (Blackwell et al., 2014, para.4). Still, people can do this, if they are willing to learn how, why and when. In other words, first, the devices were introduced and the infrastructure created, then administrators and teachers began to learn how to use it, with support in some countries, without support in others. Would a reverse approach have been more useful? For instance, specializing teachers and subsequently equipping schools with the necessary infrastructure? We are in a situation where there are sometimes early education institutions where there is equipment, but education managers and teachers do not have the full picture of how and when to use it, and what are the implications of this usage. Given observations and studies carried out in the school environment, we wonder how equipping kindergartens with tablets and other screen devices would work? What makes digital technology really useful in early childhood education? What should be the motivation for the introduction of digital technologies in early education? This paper provides psychological and educational benchmarks for the use of digital technologies in preschool educational institutions, as well as in the context of family education.
... Given the many barriers to learning transfer, infants and toddlers demonstrate a video deficit, or a tendency to learn less from a video demonstration than the same demonstration in person (Anderson and Pempek, 2005). For instance, toddlers are more likely to imitate an action they see in person than the same action presented in a video (Barr et al., 2007a;Krcmar, 2010a,b;McCall et al., 1977). The video deficit has been demonstrated in a wide range of learning tasks and is most pronounced during the first 3 years of life (Strouse and Samson, 2021). ...
This entry considers theory and research regarding young children's learning from screen media. Research demonstrates that young children can and do learn from educational media designed with the explicit goal to teach. Moreover, young children can learn knowledge and skills in a wide range of cognitive and socioemotional domains and generalize their learning to new contexts. Some correlational evidence even suggests that the benefit of educational media may be long-lasting. Yet, learning is not guaranteed. To learn from media, children must attend to the right information at the right time, comprehend the intended lesson, and create a sufficiently flexible mental representation of the core lesson so it can be transferred to new contexts. Each of these processes is influenced by characteristics of the content, child, and context. Moreover, each of these processes involve developmental change that makes it particularly challenging for infants to learn from media. This entry considers the cognitive processes involved in learning from media, how these processes change across early childhood, and how learning differs by characteristics of the media content, the child, and the context in which media are used.
... repeat actions they viewed on television up to a day later (Barr et al., 2007), at 18 months of age, they can recall information they have seen on television up to 2 weeks later, and by age 2 they can recall this information up to 1 month later (Brito et al., 2012). It has also been suggested that children may learn about aggressive behaviors from the screens themselves. ...
Screen use is now a common part of children's daily lives and is embedded in the many layers that influence children's development. Following a brief review of typical areas of young children's development, including language and socioemotional skills, this chapter explores the risks and benefits of screen use in children. We highlight the current state of empirical evidence in this area and discuss the importance of longitudinal and nuanced screen use data to disentangle the potential pros and cons of screen use on child development. We finish with implications of the current literature and areas for future direction.
... These perceptual differences may interfere with infants' ability to learn from videos or to generalize from the screen to the real world. By 6 months of age, infants can reproduce new actions directed at objects shown on a screen, actions that they would otherwise not produce spontaneously, after simply manipulating the objects (Meltzoff, 1988;Barr and Hayne, 1999;Hayne et al., 2003;Barr et al., 2007aBarr et al., , 2010bBarr and Wyss, 2008;Strouse and Troseth, 2008). At this age, a video model yields the same level of imitation as a live model (Barr et al., 2007a). ...
... By 6 months of age, infants can reproduce new actions directed at objects shown on a screen, actions that they would otherwise not produce spontaneously, after simply manipulating the objects (Meltzoff, 1988;Barr and Hayne, 1999;Hayne et al., 2003;Barr et al., 2007aBarr et al., , 2010bBarr and Wyss, 2008;Strouse and Troseth, 2008). At this age, a video model yields the same level of imitation as a live model (Barr et al., 2007a). However, by 12 months, it takes twice as many demonstrations (Barr et al., 2007b) and exposure time (Strouse and Troseth, 2008) for infants to imitate actions from a 2D model on screen than from a real 3D model. ...
The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in the use of screen media in families, and infants are exposed to screens at younger ages than ever before. The objective of this review is twofold: (1) to understand the correlates and demographic factors determining exposure to screens, including interactive screens, when available, and (2) to study the effects of watching screens and using touchscreens on cognitive development, during the first 3 years of life. We argue that the effects of screen viewing depend mostly on contextual aspects of the viewing rather than on the quantity of viewing. That context includes the behavior of adult caregivers during viewing, the watched content in relation to the child’s age, the interactivity of the screen and whether the screen is in the background or not. Depending on the context, screen viewing can have positive, neutral or negative effects on infants’ cognition.
