A recent study published in JAMA Network Open explores how tablet use by toddlers with poor language development is influenced by interference with joint attention. In this process, two people focus on the same thing with shared awareness for social reasons.
Study: Mobile media content exposure and toddlers’ responses to attention prompts and behavioral requests. Image Credit: NadyaEugene / Shutterstock.com
Introduction
Toddlers often spend large amounts of screen time using tablets to play games and enjoy other video content. Previous studies have confirmed this exposure’s significant impact on forming critical social skills.
Whereas television exposure was previously a focal point of interest for the entire family during leisure hours, it has become increasingly common for both young and elderly individuals to rely on handheld devices. Current recommendations advise against any screen time before 18 months of age and to monitor its use thereafter until 24 months.
Tablets and smartphones allow young children to dictate what is happening on the screen by scrolling, tapping the content to be viewed, playing a game, or playing with digital toys. This interaction is confined to a device, thereby preventing toddlers from learning how to engage with other humans. Importantly, this shared awareness is essential for adequate social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic development.
Language delay and inattention have been recognized as consequences of excessive digital media use, especially in early life. Emotional regulation and inhibitory control are also significantly reduced in young children exposed to high levels of touch screen time.
About the study
The current study assesses how media content delivered by tablets was associated with responses to attention cues and behavioral requests in toddlers. Taken together, 63 participants between 18 and 32 months old with a typical pattern of neurobehavioral development were included in the study.
The children had an average of 281 minutes of media exposure each week, with 28% and 16% having 70 or fewer minutes and 420 or more minutes each week, respectively.
Two cohorts were formed. One cohort was offered real toys to play with, while the other either watched a video showing children playing with toys, played with a digital toy, or played an online game.
While playing, the researchers offered joint attention cues, during which the child was called by name to look at an object pointed to or named. Behavioral requests at the end of the playtime involved asking the child to return the toy or tablet three times while play continued.
The proportion of attention prompts that obtained a response and the response to a behavioral request was recorded.
Loss of response to attention prompts
About 15% of toddlers playing a game on a tablet paid less attention to prompts than those playing with real toys. Behavioral prompts received reduced responses in 75% of male, but not female, toddlers.
Compared to playing with an actual toy, the lowest responses were observed among toddlers playing with the tablet commercial game compared to the tablet toy play watching or tablet toy play groups. While 18% of the difference in average joint attention response was attributed to interindividual differences, 75% was due to differences in the play the toddler engaged in.
The decline in responses to both types of prompts was more significant with older toddlers. For the tablet commercial game, an increase in age was associated with a -0.03% reduction in joint attention response each month.
Behavioral requests received earlier responses during the tablet-watching task. Significant interindividual differences were also observed, thus clarifying the variation across different tasks and participants.
Toddlers who used mobile media more at home exhibited reduced responses to either attention or behavioral prompts. Lower response to joint attention prompts was identified with tablet watching or tablet toy games.
Toddlers who played with a real toy responded better to attention prompts associated with better language skills. Moreover, toddlers who paid more joint attention during the tablet game had better fine motor skills.
Conclusions
The study findings indicate that tablet play among toddlers causes a loss of joint attention compared to real toy play. Toddlers engaged in tablet play were also less likely to respond to behavioral prompts.
The non-response rate to joint attention prompts when playing with the tablets declined to 20-30%. This is congruent with the proportion of toddlers who exhibit strong displeasure when a tablet is taken away from them after even short tablet play periods.
This suggests that tablet commercial games may be detrimental to early social-communicative interactions, particularly if they are reducing or replacing real toy play, parent-child dyadic activities, or peer play.”
Real toys support endogenous attention, which is defined as the child’s ability to deliberately focus on these toys, as well as their ability to pay attention to the activity itself. Comparatively, exogenous attention, which refers to the automatic and involuntary redirection of attention towards a new environmental stimulus, occurs with tablet play.
Real toy objects also promote muscular coordination, cognition, and the use of symbols during play, which is not achieved with touchscreens.
Personalized touchscreen tablets may reduce shared communicative and social engagement. Reduced gazing and pointing as a method of communication during tablet play disrupts the development of common awareness and, subsequently, language development.
Touchscreens require a small range of movement within a short period of time, with fewer permitted actions and a narrow range of attention.
Future studies must examine how the shift from self-driven examination of and focus on a play object to limited play, as with tablets, affects child development in the real world.
