Books, screens each help kids learn
“Print is dead” was the famous cry of academics who predicted the digital age would do away with traditional forms of reading. While tablets, smartphones and other devices have proven them largely correct, a growing number of studies has illustrated the shortcomings in learning that the phenomenon has caused.
In June of this year, the Canadian Paediatric Society took a more reasoned stance. In a position statement titled “Screen time and young children: promoting health and development in a digital world,” the organization cited the potential benefits of exposure to digital media in children under five years old.
Taking into account studies showing that children three to five years old in Canada spend an average of two hours daily in front of screens, the society stated that well-designed, age-appropriate television programs with specific educational goals “can provide an additional route to early language and literacy for children. Quality programming also fosters aspects of cognitive development, including positive racial attitudes and imaginative play.”
The society added: “Early evidence suggests that interactive media, specifically applications that involve contingent responses from an adult, can help children retain taught information.”
“This responsiveness, when coupled with age-appropriate content, timing and intensity of action, can teach new words to 24-month-olds.”
According to the society’s research, there is evidence that interactive “learn-to-read” apps and ebooks can build early literacy by providing practice with letters, phonics and word recognition.
Intent on providing a balanced view, the society also noted the drawbacks of digital media exposure, namely that prolonged TV viewing has been associated with “lower cognitive abilities, especially related to short-term memory, early reading and math skills, and language development.”
The society concluded its dissertation by recommending there should be no screen time for children under two years old, and one hour daily for those two to five. It also recommended “avoiding screens for at least one hour before bedtime, given the potential for melatonin-suppressing effects.”
Another report, published in May on the Frontiers in Psychology website, explored how parent-toddler behaviour and language differ when reading electronic and print picture books. Patricia Ganea, of the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and co-author Gabrielle Strouse found that electronic reading could be a supportive early literacy activity for toddlers, because “children paid more attention, displayed more positive affect and made themselves more available when reading the electronic than the traditional print versions of the books” during a study of 152 children from Toronto and surrounding areas.
Also, “children correctly chose a previously unfamiliar animal labelled in the book more often when they had read the electronic than the traditional print book.”
However, the authors concede that “increased engagement does not always translate into increased learning,” and that more studies are required to determine the benefits and hazards of new media.
Keith Stanovich, Canada research chair of applied cognitive science at the University of Toronto, is bothered by some assumptions of screen-based learning. He says “distractions such as texting and simultaneous things to do on the screen will ensure that no deep reading takes place: that’s why book reading is best for deep reading. The idea that children looking at screens are taking in, at a deep level, information from many different streams is a falsehood.”
Stanovich explains that true learning requires sustained attention and analytic thought; however, “the visual salience of screens in the life of our students, and even more importantly their attentional appeal, can lead to a type of habitual shallow processing.”
Unfortunately, he adds, people are “naturally cognitive misers” who don’t have to be encouraged to engage in this type of processing — and many instructors are worried that the intensive screen life of their students will make it even more difficult to get them into the habit of deep analytic thought.
Stanovich suggests that parents think of the issue in terms of nutrition: “We need both fat and fibre in our diets, but fat doesn’t need a cheerleader, whereas fibre does. Cheerleading for more screen learning among our students is like cheerleading for people to eat more sugar and fat.”
He also calls upon educators to promote print reading like a dietary fibre.
“They need to explicitly represent it and model it, because it fosters the type to processing that our students — being cognitive misers — won’t naturally do.”