Abstract:
Young children\'s rapid vocabulary growth during the first few years is supported by input during social interactions with caregivers and, increasingly, from digital media. However, the amount of exposure to both sources can vary substantially across socioeconomic classes, and little is known about how social interactions and digital media use together predict vocabulary in the first few years of life. The current study takes a first step toward examining whether increased social interactions with other individuals may buffer the potentially detrimental effects of digital media use on language among a socioeconomically diverse sample. 305 caregivers of children between 17 and 30-months completed questionnaires about their family demographics, their child\'s technology use, and the child\'s daily routines and social interactions. Findings suggest children who experience fewer human interactions and greater technology exposure have smaller vocabularies than their peers who socialize more and use less technology, and this disparity becomes greater as children get older. Moreover, the number of social interactions moderates the link between SES, digital media, and vocabulary such that the negative impact of digital media on vocabulary for children from low SES households can be offset with increased social interactions. Together, this suggests that increasing the amount of human interactions may serve as a protective factor for vocabulary outcomes in a world where digital media use is prominent.
摘要:
幼儿在最初几年的快速词汇增长是由与照顾者的社交互动中的输入支持的,越来越多,从数字媒体。然而,两种来源的暴露量在不同的社会经济类别中可能会有很大差异,人们对社交互动和数字媒体如何一起使用来预测生命最初几年的词汇量知之甚少。当前的研究迈出了第一步,以检查与其他个人的社交互动增加是否可以缓冲数字媒体使用对社会经济多样化样本中语言的潜在不利影响。305名17至30个月儿童的照顾者完成了关于他们家庭人口统计数据的问卷,他们孩子的技术使用,以及孩子的日常生活和社交互动。研究结果表明,与社交更多,使用更少技术的同龄人相比,经历较少的人际交往和更多技术接触的孩子的词汇量较小,随着孩子年龄的增长,这种差距变得越来越大。此外,社交互动的数量缓和了SES之间的联系,数字媒体,和词汇,使数字媒体对低SES家庭儿童词汇的负面影响可以通过增加的社交互动来抵消。一起,这表明,在数字媒体使用突出的世界中,增加人类互动的数量可能成为词汇结果的保护因素。