Poster #113 - The Immediate Effects of Touchscreen Usage on Executive Functions of Preschoolers: Focusing on Parent-Child Interaction

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Following the findings of Antrill and Wang (2018), this study aims to investigate how touchscreen usage affects preschoolers’ immediate executive functions (EF) performance and how parent-child interaction during touchscreen usage correlates with their EF performance. Forty-five preschoolers (21 male; 38 months to 67 months of age; M 53.67 months; SD 9.63 months) were randomly assigned to 3 intervention groups: (1) game app group (Game); (2) creation app group (Creation); and (3) video app group (Video). The Game group played a bubble exploding game, which required quick finger-moving on the touch screen device. The Creation group played a beauty salon game, where free-style hair design was encouraged. The Video group watched a short video played on the device. All of the participants were pretested with the swift task to assess cognitive flexibility (FitzGibbon et al., 2014) and the day-night task to assess inhibitory control (Montgomery & Koeltzow, 2010). The corresponding touchscreen interventions, which lasted about 11 minutes, were conducted 4 to 6 weeks after the pretests, followed by the same 2 tasks as posttests immediately. The interaction between the participants and their parents during the intervention was video-recorded and later coded by two researchers independently. Four main variables were derived from the two EF tasks of both the pretests and posttests, and the results are listed in table 1. For the swift task, two swift cost variables were calculated to indicate how shifting rules negatively impact response accuracy and reaction time. The higher the cost, the worse the impact. For the day-night task, response accuracy and reaction time were listed. As shown in table 1, the swift cost decreased after the intervention in all three groups by comparing the posttest performance with their own pretest within each group. The accuracy rate and the reaction time of the day-night task also showed possible practice effects with the repetitive pre-post testing design. The planned between-group comparison of the variables was conducted on the disparities between the pretests and the posttests. It was found that the Creation intervention better enhanced the preschoolers’ inhibitory control than the Video intervention in terms of the cost of the reaction time (t(28) = 1.76, p < .05). As to the parent-child interaction frequency, there was more interaction in the Creation and the Game groups than in the video group. In the Creation group, the more interaction, the better the cognitive flexibility shown in the posttest. However, in the Game group, the more interaction, the worse the cognitive flexibility and also the worse the inhibition in the posttest. The opposite patterns of the correlations might be factored by different parent-child interaction natures during the various types of touchscreen intervention. During the Creation intervention, the interaction was mostly about sharing the game experiences and involving more positive emotions. While during the Game interaction, the parents gave instructions, and some might even intrusively guide their children by touching the screen. These findings might imply how parents can better regulate their children’s touchscreen usage.

Authors

• Hui-Li Lin, Fu Jen Catholic University
  Presenting Author

• Yueh Lee, Taoyuan Psychiatric Center