Digital Media and Developing Brains: Concerns and Opportunities.

Purpose of Review: The incorporation of digital technologies and their use in youth's everyday lives has been increasing rapidly over the past several decades with possible impacts on youth development and mental health. This narrative review aimed to consider how the use of digital technologies may be influencing brain development underlying adaptive and maladaptive screen-related behaviors. Recent Findings: To explore and provide direction for further scientific inquiry, an international group of experts considered what is known, important gaps in knowledge, and how a research agenda might be pursued regarding relationships between screen media activity and neurodevelopment from infancy through childhood and adolescence. While an understanding of brain-behavior relationships involving screen media activity has been emerging, significant gaps exist that have important implications for the health of developing youth. Summary: Specific considerations regarding brain-behavior relationships involving screen media activity exist for infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood; middle childhood; and adolescence. Transdiagnostic frameworks may provide a foundation for guiding future research efforts. Translating knowledge gained into better interventions and policy to promote healthy development is important in a rapidly changing digital technology environment.

Adolescents and social media: The effects of frequency of use, self-presentation, social comparison, and self esteem on possible self imagery.

INTRODUCTION: American adolescents continue to show a strong social media presence. This presence entails consistent monitoring of how they present themselves, and how that presentation compares to others, which in turn impacts the versions of the self they share with others. These versions include their hoped for (e.g. high academic achiever) or feared selves (e.g. inconsistent academic achiever) which have been referred to as possible selves. Here, we explored the contributions of social media use, self-presentation, social comparison, and self-esteem on adolescents' reflection of their possible selves. We also examined age as a factor to determine whether early and late adolescents reflect on and craft their social media presence in similar fashions. Ideally, all adolescents would seek to share a balance of possible selves whereby their social media presence includes both a hoped for self and a feared self in the same aspect of their lives (e.g. academic achievement and failure). These balances have been linked to positive outcomes in offline contexts. METHODS: We explored the relative contributions of age, self-esteem, social media use, online self-presentation behaviors, and online social comparison tendencies to the ideation of balanced possible selves among 152 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years (55.9% female). We also included an exploratory analysis of gender differences within the content of possible selves reported. RESULTS: The results of a sequential regression analysis, regressing the balance of possible selves on each of the independent variables, yielded no significant differences. A chi square analysis, however, revealed differences among males and females in the content of feared selves as female participants reported more feared selves involving interpersonal relationships than males. CONCLUSION: Further exploration of possible selves in the digital context is warranted given our findings that adolescent females, in particular, focus on interpersonal relationships as they develop their self-esteem and self-concept.

Effectiveness of Categorical Clustering as an Encoding Versus a Retrieval Strategy Among Preschoolers.

The relative effectiveness of categorical clustering as an encoding and retrieval strategy was examined among 92 three- and four-year-olds on a spatial memory task used to examine utilization deficiencies. Specifically, participants were asked to remember the locations of one of two categories of toys (i.e., four animals and four chairs) within in a multicolored square box. Most children spontaneously used a categorical clustering strategy when removing toys from the box (reflecting encoding) and/or replacing them (reflecting retrieval). However, the production of a categorical clustering strategy did not facilitate recall for all participants. Children who engaged in categorical clustering exclusively during encoding were more likely to present with a utilization deficiency by recalling fewer toy locations than those exclusively clustering during retrieval. Recall performance was not enhanced among children who used categorical clustering during both phases.

The "EF" in deficiency: Examining the linkages between executive function and the utilization deficiency observed in preschoolers.

We investigated the contribution of preschoolers' executive function (EF) skills to the effectiveness of their spontaneous strategy production when learning. Performance on computerized tasks of inhibition, attention shifting, and working memory was examined in relation to the effectiveness of 112 3- to 5-year-olds' spontaneous strategy production on a spatial memory task. Participants were asked to remember the locations of four toys representing one of two categories (animals or chairs) placed in a wooden box. Most participants spontaneously implemented a clustering strategy by removing and/or replacing the toys according to category membership. However, less than half of these strategic participants showed concomitant memory benefits (recall of toy locations). The remainder showed a utilization deficiency. After controlling for age and IQ, participants who performed better on EF tasks were more likely to benefit from having used the clustering strategy. These findings indicate that utilization deficiencies among preschoolers may be partially accounted for by individual differences in EF.

Games for Health for Children-Current Status and Needed Research.

Videogames for health (G4H) offer exciting, innovative, potentially highly effective methods for increasing knowledge, delivering persuasive messages, changing behaviors, and influencing health outcomes. Although early outcome results are promising, additional research is needed to determine the game design and behavior change procedures that best promote G4H effectiveness and to identify and minimize possible adverse effects. Guidelines for ideal use of different types of G4H by children and adolescents should be elucidated to enhance effectiveness and minimize adverse effects. G4H stakeholders include organizational implementers, policy makers, players and their families, researchers, designers, retailers, and publishers. All stakeholders should be involved in G4H development and have a voice in setting goals to capitalize on their insights to enhance effectiveness and use of the game. In the future, multiple targeted G4H should be available to meet a population's diverse health needs in developmentally appropriate ways. Substantial, consistent, and sophisticated research with appropriate levels of funding is needed to realize the benefits of G4H.

Introduction: digital games as a context for cognitive development, learning, and developmental research.

The authors present reasons why developmental psychologists should care about children's and adolescents' digital game play. These reasons may be identified as: a) digital game play is an integral aspect of children's and adolescents' lives; b) digital game play contributes to learning and cognitive development; and c) developmental research has the potential to contribute to effective educational game design. The authors expand on these reasons with the goal of introducing or reintroducing to developmental psychologists a rich and very relevant context in which to examine children's and adolescents' applied cognitive development.

The impact of recreational video game play on children's and adolescents' cognition.

Current empirical findings show linkages between recreational video game play and enhanced cognitive skills, primarily among young adults. However, consideration of this linkage among children and adolescents is sparse. Thus, discussions about facilitating transfer of cognitive skills from video game play to academic tasks among children and adolescents remains largely uninformed by research. To inform this discussion, we review available research concerning the cognitive benefits of video game play among children and adolescents and their impressions of video games as learning tools as these impressions may impact their application of cognitive skills used during game play to academic tasks.

Young children's ability to recognize advertisements in web page designs.

Identifying what is, and what is not an advertisement is the first step in realizing that an advertisement is a marketing message. Children can distinguish television advertisements from programmes by about 5 years of age. Although previous researchers have investigated television advertising, little attention has been given to advertisements in other media, even though other media, especially the Internet, have become important channels of marketing to children. We showed children printed copies of invented web pages that included advertisements, half of which had price information, and asked the children to point to whatever they thought was an advertisement. In two experiments we tested a total of 401 children, aged 6, 8, 10 and 12 years of age, from the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Six-year-olds recognized a quarter of the advertisements, 8-year-olds recognized half the advertisements, and the 10- and 12-year-olds recognized about three-quarters. Only the 10- and 12-year-olds were more likely to identify an advertisement when it included a price. We contrast our findings with previous results about the identification of television advertising, and discuss why children were poorer at recognizing web page advertisements. The performance of the children has implications for theories about how children develop an understanding of advertising.

Boys' and girls' use of cognitive strategy when learning to play video games.

The authors examined gender differences in the cognitive strategies that children use when they learn how to play a video game. They interviewed 2nd- and 5th-grade boys and girls about how often they played video games and what they did "when learning how to play a video game." The children's responses to the latter question were categorized as either internally or externally oriented (i.e., reading a manual vs. asking for help, respectively). The results indicated that more frequent players and older children were more likely to cite internally based strategies. No main effects of gender were found for the proportions of the internally vs. externally based strategies that were cited.

The impact of spatial cues on preschoolers' selective attention.

The effects of spatial arrangement on preschool children's ability to selectively attend were investigated. Three- and 4-year old children were shown a multicolor dollhouse room intended to serve as a special place containing miniature chairs and models of animals. One category of objects was designated as relevant and 1 as irrelevant. Relevant items were placed in each of the apparatus's corners or in the middle of its walls. Children in the corners condition correctly relocated more relevant items than children in the wall or control conditions. The findings suggest that for both age groups, the ability to recall relevant items may be independent of their ability to demonstrate a selective attention strategy.