Investigating the educational potential of touchscreen apps for children's early vocabulary acquisition

Children are growing up in an increasingly digital age, surrounded by digital media in the home, nursery and at school. Children's language development is strongly related to the language that they hear in their environment (Hart & Risley, 1995) and research suggests that parental screen media use reduces the quality and amount of language spoken to their children (Christakis, Gilkerson, Richards, Zimmerman, Garrison et al., 2009; Kirkorian, Pempek, Murphy, Schmidt, & Anderson, 2009; Pempek, Kirkorian, & Anderson, 2014; Radesky, Silverstein, Zuckerman, & Christakis, 2014). At the same time, screen media has the potential to provide a valuable source of language input and educational entertainment for young children. The American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) have recently revised their recommendations for children's screen media use to account for this educational potential (AAP, 2016). The AAP encourage children aged 2-5 years to use screen media but restrict their recommendations to high quality educational screen media which should be used alongside their parents and caregivers and for less than 1 hour per day (AAP, 2016). The question remains however, what constitutes educational screen media for young children? For touchscreen apps, a recent review paper highlighted that apps that promote active, engaged, meaningful and socially interactive learning have the potential to educate young children (Hirsh-Pasek, Zosh, Golinkoff, Gray, Robb & Kaufman, 2015). While 72% of apps aimed at children are classed as "educational" (Shuler, Levine & Ree, 2012), there is little research evidence to back up or contradict these claims. Clearer evidence and guidelines for children's educational apps would provide invaluable knowledge for caregivers, early years practitioners and children's app developers.

The aim of this project is to investigate children's language learning apps to develop a scientific understanding of the app marketplace and to apply developmental theories of learning, memory and language acquisition to the development of educational touchscreen apps. The proposed project will combine a systematic review of the children's educational app marketplace with a series of empirical studies to explore how children learn language from touchscreen apps and digital media. The first phase of this project, a systematic review of the app marketplace, will to determine the educational potential for apps currently available to children using theories of language acquisition. These findings will then guide a series of empirical studies investigating children's app interaction and language learning outcomes. Furthermore, we will determine the role of caregiver interaction during children's app use on children's language learning outcomes to provide evidence on the AAP (2016) recommendation for parental co-use during children's screen media use. Across these studies, this project will advance our understanding of educational touchscreen apps designed to teach children language by providing evidence-based guidelines for touchscreen apps and contributing to the development of an evidence based word learning app. This project will also make important theoretical contributions to theories of word learning by incorporating evidence for word learning from digital media and as a result promote the development of evidence-based educational screen media for young children.

The proposed research addresses the ESRC's strategic priority of new ways of being in a digital age. Our impact pathway ensures that our research on children's early learning from touchscreen apps has outcomes in terms of societal impact extending beyond apps with applications to children's learning from digital media more generally. We have identified three main beneficiaries: 1) app developers, 2) early years practitioners and 3) caregivers and children from both low and higher SES backgrounds. It is anticipated that proposed project will have a major impact for these beneficiaries by providing an insight into the way in which children learn from touchscreen apps and digital media.

Industry. We have approached two companies who work with children's educational apps, Pearson and Fundamentally Children. We will inform these companies about the progress of the project on an annual basis and anticipate that development projects for children's digital media will be informed by this research. We expect further impact from the proposed work through the development of a number of guidelines for the development of educational apps for young children.

Early Years Practitioners. One of the core early learning goals in Department for Education's Statutory Framework for the Early Years (2014) is that children can "select and use technology for particular purposes" (p. 12). We will liaise with early years practitioners on a regular basis throughout the project when recruiting and testing children for our empirical research studies, through this contact we will inform early years practitioners on best practices for children's digital technology use based on academic research.

Caregivers. Given the prevalence of screen media in young children's lives, caregivers will benefit from having a greater understanding about children's learning capabilities. Through regular contact with caregivers during the research process, we will be able communicate clear guidelines to determine whether educational apps are appropriate or not and inform caregivers about best practices when using screen media with children.

General Public. The research is also of general interest and relevance to the broader public. Our impact pathway includes regular press releases on the results of the studies, as well as outreach events in public understanding of science events. We will contribute to events such as the British Science Festival and the Manchester Science Festival, and local science organisation events, such as Café Scientifique. The proposed work will therefore have a positive impact on the public understanding of science.