This book discusses the burgeoning world of young children’s exposure to educational media and its myriad implications for research, theory, practice, and policy. Experts across academic disciplines and the media fill knowledge gaps and address concerns regarding apps, eBooks, and other screen-based technologies—which are being used by younger and younger children—and content delivery and design. Current research shows the developmental nuances of the child as learner in home, school, and mobile contexts, and the changes as parenting and pedagogy accommodate the complexities of the new interactive world. The book also covers methods for evaluating the quality of new media and prosocial digital innovations such as video support for separated families and specialized apps for at-risk toddlers. Highlights of the coverage: The role of content and context on learning and development from mobile media. Learning from TV and touchscreens during early childhood Educational preschool programming. How producers craft engaging characters to drive content delivery. The parental media mediation context of young children’s media use. Supporting children to find their own agency in learning. Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians and related professionals, and graduate students in diverse fields including infancy and early childhood development, child and school psychology, social work, pediatrics, and educational psychology.

This book discusses the burgeoning world of young children’s exposure to educational media and its myriad implications for research, theory, practice, and policy. Experts across academic disciplines and the media fill knowledge gaps and address concerns regarding apps, eBooks, and other screen-based technologies—which are being used by younger and younger children—and content delivery and design. Current research shows the developmental nuances of the child as learner in home, school, and mobile contexts, and the changes as parenting and pedagogy accommodate the complexities of the new interactive world. The book also covers methods for evaluating the quality of new media and prosocial digital innovations such as video support for separated families and specialized apps for at-risk toddlers. Highlights of the coverage: The role of content and context on learning and development from mobile media. Learning from TV and touchscreens during early childhood Educational preschool programming. How producers craft engaging characters to drive content delivery. The parental media mediation context of young children’s media use. Supporting children to find their own agency in learning. Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians and related professionals, and graduate students in diverse fields including infancy and early childhood development, child and school psychology, social work, pediatrics, and educational psychology.

The digital age is changing our children’s lives and childhood dramatically. New technologies transform the way people interact with each other, the way stories are shared and distributed, and the way reality is presented and perceived. Parents experience that toddlers can handle tablets and apps with a level of sophistication the children’s grandparents can only envy. The question of how the ecology of the child affects the acquisition of competencies and skills has been approached from different angles in different disciplines. In linguistics, psychology and neuroscience, the central question addressed concerns the specific role of exposure to language. Two influential types of theory have been proposed. On one view the capacity to learn language is hard-wired in the human brain: linguistic input is merely a trigger for language to develop. On an alternative view, language acquisition depends on the linguistic environment of the child, and specifically on language input provided through child-adult communication and interaction. The latter view further specifies that factors in situated interaction are crucial for language learning to take place. In the fields of information technology, artificial intelligence and robotics a current theme is to create robots that develop, as children do, and to establish how embodiment and interaction support language learning in these machines. In the field of human-machine interaction, research is investigating whether using a physical robot, rather than a virtual agent or a computer-based video, has a positive effect on language development. The Research Topic will address the following issues: - What are the methodological challenges faced by research on language acquisition in the digital age? - How should traditional theories and models of language acquisition be revised to account for the multimodal and multichannel nature of language learning in the digital age? - How should existing and future technologies be developed and transformed so as to be most beneficial for child language learning and cognition? - Can new technologies be tailored to support child growth, and most importantly, can they be designed in order to enhance specifically vulnerable children’s language learning environment and opportunities? - What kind of learning mechanisms are involved? - How can artificial intelligence and robotics technologies, as robot tutors, support language development? These questions and issues can only be addressed by means of an interdisciplinary approach that aims at developing new methods of data collection and analysis in cross-sectional and longitudinal perspectives. We welcome contributions addressing these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective both theoretically and empirically.

Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts investigates the impact of screen media on key aspects of children and adolescents’ cognitive development. Highlighting how screen media impact cognitive development, the book addresses a topic often neglected amid societal concerns about pathological media use and vulnerability to media effects, such as aggression, cyber-bullying and Internet addiction. It addresses children and adolescents’ cognitive development involving their interactions with parents, early language development, imaginary play, attention, memory, and executive control, literacy and academic performance. Covers the impact of digital from both theoretical and practical perspectives Investigates effects of digital media on attention, memory, language and executive functioning Examines video games, texting, and virtual reality as contexts for learning Explores parent-child interactions around media Considers the development of effective educational media Addresses media literacy and critical thinking about media Considers social policy for increasing access to high quality education media and the Internet Provides guidance for parents on navigating children’s technology usage

The Handbook of Children, Media and Development brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in the fields of developmental psychology, developmental science, communication, and medicine to provide an authoritative, comprehensive look at the empirical research on media and media policies within the field. 25 newly-commissioned essays bring new research to the forefront, especially on digital media, developmental research, and public policy debates Includes helpful introductions to each section, a theoretical overview of the field, and a final chapter that offers a vision of future research Contributors include key, international authorities in the field