Toddlers are able to meaningfully engage with touch screen devices in various ways, suggests a study conducted in Ireland.
The researchers’ data consisted of questionnaire responses, collected over a 5-month period, from parents of children aged 12 months to 3 years. Parents were asked about their children’s access to touch screen devices and ability to perform common forms of interaction on them. Medical staff recruited the study participants in both inpatient and outpatient settings at a university hospital.
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The researchers analyzed responses from the parents of 82 children. “Toddlers at high risk of or under investigation for developmental delay were excluded” from the study, reported Dr. Caroline Ahearne and her colleagues.
Among the 67 parents who owned a touch screen device, 58 reported having allowed the child to play with the device for a median of 15 minutes per day. Thirty-six of the 58 parents who gave their children access to a touch screen device took the additional step of downloading applications specifically for the child. Among the same group of 58 parents, 53 reported that the child could swipe across a touch screen, 29 said the child was able to unlock a touch screen, 37 reported that they thought the child actively looked at touch screen features, and 42 reported that they thought the child was able to identify and use touch screen features “and that this skill significantly improved with age.”
At a median age of 29 months, 19 of the 58 toddlers could engage with a touch screen in all four of the ways mentioned, according to their parents.
This study shows that a touch screen testing platform could be “feasible and acceptable” for “assessment of development and early intervention” in high-risk toddlers. “However, further testing is required in a variety of populations both typically developing and at risk of developmental delay to explore the trajectory of the development of touch screen skills and the effects of pathology on the process,” wrote the researchers, who reported no conflicts of interest.
Read the full the study in Archives of Disease in Childhood (2015 Dec 21. doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2015-309278).