The Impact of Smartphone Exposure on Executive Attention during Early Childhood

• In Event: 1-109 - Executive functioning in emotional, motivational and social contexts

Integrative Statement

New media technologies, such as smartphones, have reached penetration rates of over 82% globally (Deloitte, 2018). This widespread use of smartphone devices has immersed even young children in a digital lifestyle, beginning at an early age. Little is known, however, about the impact of early exposure to smartphone devices on cognitive development. Past research suggests that television—until recently, one of the most ubiquitous media forms—has a negative effect on children's attentional skills because frequent changes in scenes and content disrupt young children's attentional control―i.e., the adaptive, goal-oriented cognitive ability that includes sustaining attention, monitoring, and selectively attending to relevant information while inhibiting irrelevant stimuli (Astle & Scerif, 2009). Given that the enhanced accessibility of various forms of smartphone technology can be irresistible to young children who lack self-regulation skills, it is plausible that children’s smartphone overuse can adversely affect their executive attention which is also integral to many higher-order skills such as problem-solving and decision-making, and is predictive of behavioral problems and psychopathology, school readiness and academic performance, parental and peer relationships, resilience, and adjustment (e.g., Blair & Razza, 2007; Eisenberg et al., 2004; Kochanska et al., 2009; Nigg, 2006; Posner & Rothbart, 2000). Therefore, we investigated the impact of heavy smartphone consumption on children’s executive attention during early childhood.
A total of 61 preschoolers (aged 4-6) were recruited from local kindergartens. Parents were asked to fill out multiple questionnaires designed to gather information on (a) their child’s demographics and media-consumption habits. Children’s executive attention was assessed by the border version of the DCCS, Track-It task—as a measure of sustained selective attention—and the Child ANT. The independent variables that were included in both correlation and regression analyses to predict the child’s attentional functioning are (a) children’s demographic variables (gender, age, and socioeconomic status); (b) children’s receptive vocabulary, and various aspects of smartphone use (e.g., weekly and weekend frequency and specific content) and other media usage (TV or computer).
When partial correlational analysis was performed with age and sex as control variables, we found that children’s weekly smartphone usage for an education purpose (i.e., reading, playing education apps, or watching education programs) was positively correlated with their performance on the border version of the DCCS and negatively correlated with orienting network efficiency scores, which suggest beneficial influence on fast target detection and selection of information, and either engagement or disengagement of attention by adaptively orienting their attention. However, children’s exposure to smartphones for non-educational and entertainment purposes (e.g., videogames or entertainment apps) was negatively correlated with children’s receptive vocabulary in particular. Our ordinary least squares regression analyses showed that children’s exposure to TV or computers, compared to smartphone devices, have relatively minimal influence on children’s performance on the DCCS. Our findings suggest that young children’s smartphone use for educational purposes may lead to cognitive benefits in executive function as assessed by the DCCS, while entertainment-oriented exposure negatively influences both linguistic and cognitive development (i.e., target recall on Track-It task) during early childhood. We will provide theoretical explanations.

Authors

• Hwajin Yang, Singapore Management University
  Presenting Author

• Wee Qin Ng, Singapore Management University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andree Hartanto, Singapore Management University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sujin Yang, Ewha Womans University
  Non-Presenting Author