Collaborative Research: Transfer of learning from touch screens and television during early childhood

小孩子经常看电视。到两岁时，90%的美国儿童每天都看电视。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，乔治城大学的Rachel Barr博士和宾厄姆顿大学的Peter Gerhardstein博士将研究幼儿的记忆和知觉因素如何影响电视和触摸屏的学习转移。两岁以后的早期教育媒体体验可以改善儿童的福祉，为他们入学和学业和社会成功做好准备。然而，接触不是专门为幼儿开发的内容会对发展产生有害影响，导致攻击性行为、消费主义和注意力问题。越来越多的二维设备，包括触摸屏（如iPhone、iPad等）现在无处不在。为了从电视和触摸屏上学习，孩子们需要将信息从二维图像转移到现实生活中的三维物体。虽然二维媒体内容和相应的真实三维内容之间的关系对成年人来说是显而易见的，但这种关系对幼儿来说是具有挑战性的。他们在电视和触摸屏上的学习能力不如在现场互动中，也就是说，在学习上存在转移缺陷。这个项目的目标是了解和改善转移赤字。孩子们在视频、触摸屏或真正的拼图板上展示如何制作拼图，然后在触摸屏或真正的拼图板上测试孩子们模仿这些动作的能力。研究预测，从触摸屏上学习比从视频上学习更容易，因为视频上提供的线索更少。第二，预期重复和实践都会改善转移赤字效应，而延迟则会加剧转移赤字效应。第三，为了检验感知因素，我们系统地改变谜题的特征，以增加深度、细节和背景线索。研究人员预测，这些额外的提示可以改善转移缺陷。这项研究提出了一些建议，即在什么时候和什么情况下，使用二维而不是三维（现场）演示可以更好地满足儿童在学习环境中处于不同发展阶段的需求。探索影响儿童早期从屏幕媒体中学习的有益因素和有害因素，包括感性因素和基于记忆的因素，可以帮助我们更好地理解如何设计节目，使幼儿从这些经历中获益最大化。如果转移赤字能够得到改善，信息的数字化交付就有可能在减少入学准备障碍方面具有很高的成本效益。这项研究对早期教育有广泛的启示。跨内容和情境的学习迁移是教育政策的核心。它能培养灵活的思维。这些研究将提供新的理论基础，这些理论基础来自于对数字时代学习迁移发展过程的高度控制。更深入地了解这项技能的发展将有助于制定有关扩大儿童市场新电子设备开发的公共政策。

Young children watch television regularly. By two years of age, 90 percent of US children are viewing television on a daily basis. With support from the National Science Foundation, Rachel Barr, Ph.D., of Georgetown University and Peter Gerhardstein, Ph.D., of Binghamton University will examine in young children how memory and perceptual factors influence transfer of learning from television and touch screens. Early educational media experiences after two years of age can improve the well-being of children, preparing them for school entry and academic and social success. However, exposure to content that is not developed specifically for young children can have deleterious affects on development, resulting in aggressive behavior, consumerism, and attentional problems. An expanding range of two-dimensional devices, including touch screens (e.g., iPhone, iPad, etc.), are now ubiquitous. In order to learn from television and touch screens, children need to transfer information across contexts from two-dimensional images to real-life three-dimensional objects. Although the relationship between two-dimensional media content and the corresponding real three-dimensional referents is obvious to adults, that relationship is challenging for young children. They show less learning from television and touch screens than they do from live interactions, that is, a transfer deficit in learning. The goal of this project is to understand and ameliorate the transfer deficit. Children are shown how to make a puzzle on video, on a touch screen or 'live' with the real puzzle board, and then the children's ability to imitate those actions is tested either on a touch screen or with the real puzzle board. The research prediction is that learning from a touch screen is easier than learning from video, due to fewer cues being provided on video. Second, the expectation is that both repetition and practice ameliorate the transfer deficit effect, and that delay exacerbates it. Third, in order to examine perceptual factors, characteristics of the puzzle are systematically changed to add depth, details and context cues. The researchers predict that these additional cues can ameliorate the transfer deficit. This research is leading to recommendations regarding when and under what circumstances the use of two-dimensional as opposed to three-dimensional (live) presentations can better address the needs of children in learning contexts at various points in development. Exploration of the helpful and deleterious factors, both perceptual and memory-based, that affect learning from screen media early in life can provide a better understanding of how to design programs to maximize young children's benefit from such experiences. If the transfer deficit can be ameliorated, digital delivery of information has the potential to be highly cost-effective in reducing barriers to school readiness. There are broad implications of this research for early education. Transfer of learning across content and context is a core of educational policy. It enables the development of flexible thinking. These studies will provide new theoretical rationale, garnered from highly controlled manipulations about the developmental course of the transfer of learning in the digital age. A stronger understanding of the development of this skill will aid in developing public policy regarding the expanding development for new electronic devices for the child market.