A Preliminary Discussion: How Technology May Be Changing Core Cognitive Processes in Emergent Literacy and Beginning Reading

• In Event: Digital Technologies and Learning to Read: Possible Effects on Communicative, Cognitive, and Attitudinal Processes

Abstract

For many of today’s children, technology is the defining characteristic of their daily life—a life framed by an infinite chain of technology-based gadgets like televisions, computers (desktop, laptop, tablet), cell/smart phones, e-books, video-players, gaming platforms (Wii, Xbox, PlayStation) and MP-3 players (Chiong & Shuler, 2010; PEW Internet & American Life Project, 2011; EU Kids Online, 2011). Not surprisingly, it is their single largest daily activity outside of sleep (McDonough, 2009). As a result young children are increasingly surrounded by language experiences that are sculpted by their technology-driven world and this phenomenon may have implications for the way their neural circuitry develops and deploys core cognitive processes that enable the development of emergent literacy and beginning reading skills (Bus & Neuman, 2009; Plowman, McPake, & Stephen, 2010; Scholastic, 2010; Seymour, 2005; Small & Vorgan, 2008; Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009; Wellings & Levine, 2009). These core or domain general processes (Welsh, et al., 2010) include, but are not limited to,.attention, working memory (declarative); speed and efficiency of information processing, and linguistic symbol systems (lexical and syntactic). Clearly young children’s experiences with technologies start early at home and in the community. For many their first encounter with a children’s book may come through a technology device like a smart phone or tablet computer. Despite the influence of technology that starts early and tends to dominate daily experiences, it is difficult to get one’s head around how this phenomenon maybe influencing the function of core cognitive processes. This seems the case because studies have not established lines of converging evidence about how technology experiences maybe influencing the core processes—or even if they are influencing the processes at all. While considerable progress has been made studying how core processes enable emergent literacy development (for review, see Dickinson & Newman, 2011) this is not the case for the influence of technology on these processes. For example, McPake, Stephen, and Plowman in 2007 found “little research into early technology experiences of children aged three to five, [and] how these experiences might relate to emerging literacies, or the implications for subsequent development” (p. 4). By 2010, Plowman, Stephen, & McPake, still found “…more questions than answers” (p.10) about the influence of technology experiences in young children’s learning and development (see also, Bus & Neuman, 2009; Neuman, 2009; Vandewater, Rideout, Wartella, Huang, Lee, & Shim, 2007; Wartella & Richert, 2009).
This presentation begins a discussion about how new digital technologies maybe impacting core cognitive processes responsible for emergent literacy and beginning reading development.

Authors

• S. Jay Samuels, University of Minnesota

• Jay S. Blanchard, Educational Testing Service