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%的美国儿童每天都在看电视。在国家科学基金会的支持下，乔治城大学的雷切尔·巴尔博士和宾厄姆顿大学的彼得·格哈德斯坦博士将研究幼儿的记忆和感知因素如何影响从电视和触摸屏进行的学习转移。两岁后的早期教育媒体体验可以改善儿童的幸福感，为他们进入学校以及取得学术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可能会对发育产生有害影响，导致攻击性行为、消费主义和注意力问题。现在，包括触摸屏(例如，iPhone、iPad等)在内的各种二维设备变得无处不在。为了从电视和触摸屏中学习，孩子们需要跨环境将信息从二维图像传输到现实生活中的三维物体。尽管二维媒体内容和相应的真实三维参照物之间的关系对成年人来说是显而易见的，但这种关系对年幼的儿童来说是具有挑战性的。他们从电视和触摸屏上学到的东西比从现场互动中学到的少，也就是说，他们在学习中存在迁移缺陷。这个项目的目标是了解和改善转移支付逆差。研究人员向孩子们展示了如何在视频、触摸屏上或用真实的拼图板进行拼图，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，由于视频提供的线索较少，从触摸屏学习比从视频学习更容易。其次，人们的预期是，重复和练习都会改善转移赤字效应，而延迟会加剧这种效应。第三，为了考察感知因素，系统地改变了拼图的特征，增加了深度、细节和背景线索。研究人员预测，这些额外的线索可以改善转移赤字。这项研究提出了一些建议，即何时以及在什么情况下，使用二维演示而不是三维演示可以更好地满足儿童在不同发展阶段的学习环境中的需要。探索在生命早期影响从屏幕媒体学习的有益和有害因素，包括感知和基于记忆的因素，可以更好地理解如何设计程序，以最大限度地使幼儿从此类经历中受益。如果转移赤字能够得到改善，数字信息传递在减少入学准备障碍方面具有极高的成本效益。这项研究对早期教育有广泛的影响。跨内容和背景的学习迁移是教育政策的核心。它使灵活思维的发展成为可能。这些研究将提供新的理论基础，从对数字时代学习迁移发展过程的高度控制的操纵中获得。更好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.