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Mobile devices compared to non-digital toy play: The impact of activity type on the quality and quantity of parent language☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106669Get rights and content

Highlights

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    The quality and quantity of parent language did not differ during mobile device use compared to magazine use.

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    Parents spoke more and used more new words during shared toy play compared to shared mobile device use.

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    Future research should explore how apps could be improved to enrich parent-child language.

Abstract

An increasing number of parents use mobile devices while caring for children and share devices with children during play. However, recent evidence suggests that independent parental mobile device use and shared parent-child device use may harm parent-to-child language. A counterbalanced, repeated measures study was conducted to investigate whether parent language quality and quantity differed between (1) parental device use, (2) parental magazine reading, (3) shared parent-child device play and (4) shared parent-child non-digital toy play. Data were collected from 24 parent-child dyads with children aged between 2.0 and 3.11 years during recorded laboratory observations. Parents provided a significantly higher number of new words and utterances during shared non-digital play compared to independent parental device use and shared non-digital play compared to shared device play. Language quantity and quality did not vary between parental device use and parental magazine use. Recommendations for parents and professionals aiming to promote children's language development with mobile devices are discussed. These results encourage parents to select non-digital toys rather than devices to promote language development in children.

Section snippets

Credit author statement

Carrie Ewin: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Andrea Reupert: Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Louise McLean: Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Christopher Ewin: Software, Writing – review & editing.

Study design

A controlled, repeated measures experiment was employed which involved a survey and laboratory recorded observations of parent-child dyads in four counterbalanced conditions. A free-play session proceeded the conditions. The conditions were: (1) independent parental device use, (2) independent parental magazine use, (3) parent-child JME, (4) parent-child shared non-digital toy play. The duration of the observations was 45 min. After participation, parents were given a $50 gift card.

Participants

A total of

Results

Correlations between all the measures by condition are shown in Table 2.

Discussion

Despite the popularity of independent parental device use and the recommendation from the American Academy of Paediatrics for parents and children to co-use devices (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2016), little is known about how parental device use and JME impacts parental language. To address this gap, this study applied a repeated measures design to evaluate parental language during parental device use, parental magazine reading, JME and shared non-digital play. Parents spoke the most and

Conclusion

Given the positive association Hoff and Naigles (2002) found between quality and quantity of language and children's vocabulary development, language losses may have future consequences for children. This study provided empirical support that shared non-digital toy play is associated with a greater quality and quantity of language than JME. The results also demonstrated that parental device use is connected with impaired language compared to shared non-digital toy play however there is no

Declaration of competing interest

None.

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    This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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