In three experiments, 32-month-old children (n = 40 for Experiment 1, n = 36 for Experiment 2) and 24-month-old children (n = 33 for Experiment 3) were asked to judge the credibility of information presented on a touchscreen device. The information was delivered by a familiar and an unfamiliar media character. Two app conditions varied on which character was accurate in naming familiar fruits. Then both characters labeled four novel fruits with nonsense words. Feedback about the accuracy of the characters’ labels of the familiar fruits was provided in Experiments 1 and 3, but no such feedback was provided in Experiment 2. Children were more likely to endorse the accurate character as the correct labeler of the novel fruits, regardless of prior familiarity with the character, the feedback presented in the touchscreen application, or the age of the child. Parent scaffolding affected only the 24-month-old children. The results reveal that very young children can make relatively sophisticated judgments about the credibility of information encountered on touchscreen devices.
BarrR.WyssN. (2008). Reenactment of televised content by 2-year-olds: Toddlers use language learned from television to solve a difficult imitation problem. Infant Behavior & Development, 31, 696-703.
2.
BarrR.ZackE.GarciaA.MuentenerP. (2008). Infants’ attention and responsiveness to television increases with prior exposure and parental interaction. Infancy, 13, 30-56.
3.
BedfordR.GligaT.FrameK.HudryK.ChandlerS.JohnsonM. H.CharmanT. (2013). Failure to learn from feedback underlies word learning difficulties in toddlers at risk for autism. Journal of Child Language, 40, 29-46.
4.
BondB. J.CalvertS. L. (2014a). A model and measure of U.S. parents’ perceptions of young children’s parasocial relationships. Journal of Children and Media, 8, 286-304.
5.
BondB. J.CalvertS. L. (2014b). Parasocial breakup among young children in the United States. Journal of Children and Media, 8, 474-490.
6.
BowlbyJ. (1969). Attachment and loss. New York, NY: Basic Books.
7.
CalvertS. L.RichardsM. N. (2014). Children’s parasocial relationships with media characters. In JordanA.RomerD. (Eds.), Media and the well-being of children and adolescents (pp. 187-200). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
8.
CalvertS. L.RichardsM. N.KentC. (2014). Personalized interactive characters for toddlers’ learning of seriation from a video presentation. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 35, 148-155.
9.
CalvertS. L.StrongB. L.GallagherL. (2005). Control as an engagement feature of young children’s attention to and learning of computer content. American Behavioral Scientist, 48, 578-589.
Common Sense Media. (2013). Zero to eight: Children’s media use in America 2013. San Francisco, CA: Author.
12.
CorriveauK.HarrisP. L. (2009). Choosing your informant: Weighing familiarity and recent accuracy. Developmental Science, 12, 426-437.
13.
FeldmanH. M.DaleP. S.CampbellT. F.ColbornD. K.Kurs-LaskyM.RocketteH. E.ParadiseJ. L. (2005). Concurrent and predictive validity of parent reports of child language at ages 2 and 3 years. Child Development, 76, 856-868.
14.
FensonL.MarchmanV. A.ThalD. J.DaleP. S.ReznickJ. S.BatesE. (2007). MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks.
15.
GolaA. A. H.RichardsM. N.LauricellaA. R.CalvertS. L. (2013). Building meaningful parasocial relationships between toddlers and media characters to teach early mathematical skills. Media Psychology, 16, 1-22.
16.
HarrisP. L.CorriveauK. H. (2011). Young children’s selective trust in informants. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 366, 1179-1187.
17.
HoffnerC. (1996). Children’s wishful identification and parasocial interaction with favorite television characters. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 40, 389-402.
18.
KoenigM.ClementF.HarrisP. (2004). Trust in testimony: Children’s use of true and false statement. Psychological Science, 10, 694-698.
19.
LauricellaA. R.BarrR.CalvertS. L. (2009). Emerging computer skills: Influences of young children’s executive functioning abilities and parental scaffolding techniques. Journal of Children, Adolescents, and the Media, 3, 217-233.
20.
LauricellaA. R.GolaA. H.CalvertS. L. (2011). Toddlers’ learning from socially meaningful video characters. Media Psychology, 14, 216-232.
21.
LauricellaA. R.PempekT. A.BarrR.CalvertS. L. (2010). Contingent computer interactions for young children’s object retrieval success. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 31, 362-369.
22.
RichardsM. N.CalvertS. L. (2014, August). Measuring young children’s parasocial relationships with media characters. Poster presented at the American Psychological Association Annual Conference, Washington, DC.
23.
RichertR. A. (2014, May). Perceptions of characters may influence preschoolers’ learning. Presentation at the National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Workshop for Grant DRL-1252146: Using Educational DVDs to Enhance Preschoolers’ STEM Education: Developing Intelligent Agents for Early STEM Learning, Evanston, IL.
24.
ShulerC. (2009). Pockets of potential: Using mobile technologies to promote children’s learning. New York, NY: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center.
25.
VygotskyL. (1997). Interaction between learning and development. In GauvainM.ColeM. (Eds.), Readings on the development of children (pp. 29-36). New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.
26.
WilsonB. J.DrogosK. L. (2007, November). Preschoolers’ attraction to media characters. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL.
