Young children's use of video as a source of socially relevant information

Research shows toddlers have difficulty learning from video, but the basis for their difficulty is unknown. In experiments with US two-year-olds, children who were told 'face to face' where to find a hidden toy found it, but those given the same information by a person on video did not. Children who engaged in a five-minute contingent interaction with a person through closed-circuit video before the hiding task used the information provided to find the toy. These findings have implications for educational television and use of video stimuli in laboratory-based research with young children. Troseth, G, Saylor, M and Archer, A,...