The effect of young children's long-term exposure to educational visual media on their cognitive development and communicative abilities.

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Current trends in visual media are causing children to have increased exposure to media such as video games, watching videos, and receiving long-term exposure to media. As such, visual media is starting to have a serious impact on children. Parents allow and even encourage children to repeatedly watch child-directed educational videotapes and other media materials, which claim to "stimulate children's cognitive development." While it is believed that such extensive exposure to visual media reduces children's responsiveness, focus, and ability to communicate with individuals in the real world, there is currently not enough evidence to support this claim.The present research focuses on the ways in which long-term exposure to educational visual media affects children's ability to respond to real life individuals. The current research involved questionnaires, experimental studies, and a short-term longitudinal study. First, 3000 parents and guardians were asked to respond to questionnaires … More regarding their children's exposure to visual media. The results showed that younger children received longer exposure to visual media, and that children of parents with compulsory parenting styles had greater exposure to visual media than those with less forcible parenting styles. Second, the educational effect of video games was compared to that of storybook reading between parents and children. The results showed that parent-child conversations markedly decreased during video game usage, and that the children did not show any progress in their cognitive abilities, thus failing to meet the games' alleged educational goals. Third, mother-child conversations during video game usage were investigated in a short-term longitudinal study. The results showed that mother-child conversations regarding the ways to play the game increased, but there was no respective increase in conversations regarding the educational content of the games. Furthermore, mother-child conversations were minimal while the child played the video games.The results are discussed regarding the impact of educational visual media on children's cognitive development. Future designs for children's educational visual media are suggested. Less