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How tablets can be used to study cognitive development: You can touch this

Ulrike James

Over the past ten years, new technology devices, in particular those with touch screen, have completely disappeared from society. Children are now practically surrounded by smart phones and iPads from birth. Despite being our regular companions, little is known about whether these instruments can be utilised to gather trustworthy scientific data in addition to just for amusement. For children aged 1 years to 10 years, who are typically too old for studies based on gazing times and too young for traditional psychophysical testing, tablets may be very helpful for gathering behavioural data. Here, we examined data from six studies that delivered developmental psychology experimental paradigms using touch-screen tablets. In experiments 1 and 2, we used a straightforward sorting and recall task with kids from 2 year old to 8 years old. Study 3 (ages 9 and 10) extended these tasks by making the stimuli more challenging and by including a perception task based on a staircase. In study 4 (age range: 2 years to 5 years), a visual search paradigm was applied, whereas in study 5 (age range: 1 years to 3 years), an extinction learning task was administered. In Research 6, we sought to learn more about the distribution of reaction times on touch displays across all ages by employing a straightforward visuo-spatial paradigm. In order to compare the results of the two studies, we also collected data from the adult participants. These data sets were examined in terms of four metrics: self-reported tablet usage, data completeness, response accuracy, and response timings. In conclusion, we discovered that kids as young as two are quite capable of engaging with tablets, are able to comprehend the relevant tasks, and are able to utilise tablets to register their replies appropriately. All studies' findings confirmed the benefits of tablet data collection, including its simplicity, portability, affordability, and high levels of kid engagement. We demonstrate the enormous potential of psychological research on young children using tablets and talk about methodological issues and possible solutions.


 
Publication d'évaluation par les pairs pour les associations, les sociétés et les universités pulsus-health-tech
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