Screen media exposure and young children's vocabulary learning and development: A meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis synthesizes research on media use in early childhood (0-6 years), word-learning, and vocabulary size. Multi-level analyses included 266 effect sizes from 63 studies (Ntotal = 11,413) published between 1988-2022. Among samples with information about race/ethnicity (51%) and sex/gender (73%), most were majority White/Non-Hispanic and between 40%-60% female. Analyses revealed a small overall positive relation between screen media exposure and vocabulary (r = .23). Experimental studies yielded a small-to-medium effect (r = .30), with stronger effects for e-books than TV/video or games/apps, and non-significant effects for video chat. In correlational studies, there was no overall association between vocabulary size and naturalistic media exposure (r = .07), with the exception of naturalistic exposure to educational media (r = .17).

Taking the good with the bad?: Social Media and Online Racial Discrimination Influences on Psychological and Academic Functioning in Black and Hispanic Youth.

Though increasing attention is being paid to adolescents' social media use, racially/ethnically-marginalized youth remain under-represented in that literature, and the effect of social media and its mechanism on these youth remain unclear. This study examined the effects of social media use on Black and Hispanic youth's psychological and academic functioning, with an attempt to investigate the role of online racial discrimination in accounting for these associations. Participants consisted of 356 Black and Hispanic youth (Mage = 16.01 years, SD = 1.60), and 78% female. The findings revealed a positive association between social media use and academic self-efficacy. A negative indirect association also emerged where social media use was associated with more exposure to vicarious, but not individual, online racial discrimination, which was related to more depressive symptoms and in turn lower academic self-efficacy. There was no direct effect of social media use on Black and Hispanic youth's anxiety symptoms, but its effect occurred indirectly via both individual and vicarious online racial discrimination. There was no evidence of group differences between Black and Hispanic youth. The findings confirm that social media is a space that proffers positive and negative effects on adolescents' psychological and academic functioning, suggesting the need for unique protections for racially/ethnically marginalized youth as they explore these online environments.

The effect of narrative coherence and visual salience on children's and adults' gaze while watching video.

Low-level visual features (e.g., motion, contrast) predict eye gaze during video viewing. The current study investigated the effect of narrative coherence on the extent to which low-level visual salience predicts eye gaze. Eye movements were recorded as 4-year-olds (n = 20) and adults (n = 20) watched a cohesive versus random sequence of video shots from a 4.5-min full vignette from Sesame Street. Overall, visual salience was a stronger predictor of gaze in adults than in children, especially when viewing a random shot sequence. The impact of narrative coherence on children's gaze was limited to the short period of time surrounding cuts to new video shots. The discussion considers potential direct effects of visual salience as well as incidental effects due to overlap between salient features and semantic content. The findings are also discussed in the context of developing video comprehension.

Teaching With Televised Stories: A Story-Focused Narrative Preview Supports Learning in Young Children.

Researchers examined the effects of previewing on preschoolers' comprehension of narrative and educational content in a television program. Children (3-5 years, N = 107) watched an educational math episode in one of three conditions: no-preview control, education-focused expository preview, or story-focused narrative preview. A main effect of previewing was found, controlling for age, character familiarity, prior knowledge, and visual attention. Specifically, the narrative preview enhanced both narrative comprehension (including central, incidental, and inferential content) and educational comprehension (including direct learning and transfer), compared to a no-preview control. Conversely, the expository preview had no effect on comprehension. Findings are interpreted with respect to story schema and relevant cognitive theories of learning from media. Implications for educational media production are discussed.

Predicting the development of interrogative forms and functions in early years: a corpus-based study of Mandarin-speaking young children.

This study examined the development of and possible predictors of interrogative forms and functions in early childhood Mandarin. All the interrogatives drawn from the Early Child Mandarin Corpus (168 children 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, and 5;6) were analyzed. The main results indicated that (i) there were significant age effects in interrogative forms and functions, with the periods between the ages of 3;6 and 4;6 and between the ages of 2;6 and 3;6 being critical in the early acquisition of interrogative forms and functions, respectively; (ii) the form-function preference was verified, with wh-questions being primarily used to seek information (RfI), and intonation/echo and rhetorical questions being used to request action (RfA); (iii) more than half (59·5%) of the Mandarin interrogatives were used for RfI, whereas only 38·9% of them were used for RfA; and (iv) age, TV viewing time, and parent-child conversation time were the significant predictors of interrogative development.