Young children's television viewing and the quality of their interactions with parents: A prospective community study.

Television is one of the most commonly viewed forms of media by children throughout the world. Excessive television viewing can influence the quality of children's relationships and interactions with their parents. We examined the emotional availability (EA) of children toward their parents by assessing child responsiveness and child involvement, using a cross-sectional and longitudinal design. We employed a large and representative community sample of Norwegian 4-year-olds (n = 995) who were followed up at 6 years old (n = 795). The results illustrate that, when viewing excessive amounts of television, children are less likely to be involved with their parents in ordinary toy-play. We argue in favor of the displacement hypothesis, stating that time-demanding technologies are negatively related to the quality of parent-child relationships because spending more time watching television will leave less time for developing nurturing social relationships.

Parent-child interactions during traditional and interactive media settings: A pilot randomized control study.

Parent-child interactions are pivotal for children's socioemotional development, yet might suffer with increased attention to screen media, as research has suggested. In response, we hypothesized that parent-child play on a tablet computer, as representative of interactive media, would generate higher-quality parent-child interactions than toy play or watching TV. We examined the emotional availability of mothers and their 2-year-old child during the previous three contexts using a randomized crossover design (n = 22) in a laboratory room. Among other results, mothers were more sensitive and structuring during joint gaming on a tablet than when engaged in toy play or watching TV. In addition, mothers were more hostile toward their children during play with traditional toys than during joint tablet gaming and television co-viewing. Such findings provide new insights into the impact of new media on parent-child interactions, chiefly by demonstrating that interactive media devices such as tablets can afford growth-enhancing parent-child interactions.

Infant directed speech in natural interaction--Norwegian vowel quantity and quality.

An interactive face-to-face setting is used to study natural infant directed speech (IDS) compared to adult directed speech (ADS). With distinctive vowel quantity and vowel quality, Norwegian IDS was used in a natural quasi-experimental design. Six Norwegian mothers were recorded over a period of 6 months alone with their infants and in an adult conversation. Vowel duration and spectral attributes of the vowels /a:/, /i:/ and /u:/, and their short counterparts /a/ /i/ and /u/ were analysed. Repeated measures analyses show that effects of vowel quantity did not differ between ADS and IDS, and for back vowel qualities, the vowel space was shifted upwards in IDS compared to ADS suggesting that fronted articulations in natural IDS may visually enhance speech to infants.