Education in the App Store: Learning Vocabulary From Digital Games During Early Childhood

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

Technology pervades early childhood: Between 2011 and 2013, the average amount of time children under 8 spent using mobile devices tripled (Common Sense Media, 2013). It is thus imperative to test whether children can learn from app-based games. Very few apps that are marketed as "educational" report benchmarks of educational quality, including research testing or educational expertise behind them (Vaala, Ly, & Levine, 2015). Furthermore, early childhood education settings have been slow to incorporate technology (Zevenbergen, 2007), perhaps due to unique challenges of learning from digital games in classrooms such as increased distraction from peers. This work reports the testing of a narrative-based digital app supporting vocabulary learning in both the laboratory and in a classroom setting. The game uses ten words in a meaningful, narrative context and encourages active engagement by having children use their knowledge of word meanings to move the game forward. In Study 1, middle-to-high-SES 4-year-olds played the game once in a lab setting. They immediately completed a receptive vocabulary test. Children heard each word and picked the corresponding picture from four non-game choices. Foil selection was guided by research on lexical development (e.g., Golinkoff et al., 1995) and included thematic (frequently found in same event), conceptual (shares a common category), and phonological (shares a similar sound) foils. This measure was a stringent test of word learning, requiring children to generalize beyond the game context and choose between meaningfully-related options. Preliminary findings (N = 18) show that children who played the game answered more vocabulary questions correctly (M = 6.3 out of 10, SD = 2.3) than control group children who did not play the game (M = 2.8, SD = .84), t(15) = 4.5, p < .001, d = 2.2. In Study 2, low-SES 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 33) in two classrooms played the game four times over four weeks as part of a larger storybook- and play-based intervention. The following week, children's receptive and expressive vocabulary learning was tested. Although there was not a significant gain on the receptive test, children's expressive knowledge showed significant gains from pre-test (M = .11, SD = .35) to post-test (M = .94, SD = 1.8), paired t(31) = 2.68, p = .01, d = .65. The difference between pre- and post-test scores was significantly larger for target words than for five control words that children were not exposed to, paired t(31) = 2.63, p = .01, d = .65. Our results indicate that both middle-to-high-SES children in a lab setting and low-SES children in a classroom setting learned new vocabulary from an interactive tablet game. These findings suggest that digital games show promise for vocabulary learning during early childhood at times when parents and teachers are not available to interact with children. Nonetheless, individual differences in skills like verbal ability or executive function may moderate learning, especially on a stringent test of receptive vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, future research will examine whether digital games lead to more learning than mere exposure.

Authors

• Rebecca Dore, University of Delaware

• Marcia Shirilla, University of Delaware

• Tara Saunders, University of Delaware

• Lindsey Foster, University of Delaware

• Emily Josephine Hopkins, Temple University

• Tamara Spiewak Toub

• Molly F. Collins, Vanderbilt University

• Jacob Shatz, Temple University

• Molly Scott, Temple University

• Jessica Lawson

• Elizabeth Burke Hadley, University of South Florida - Tampa

• Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, University of Delaware

• Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University

• David K. Dickinson, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College