RESUMO
Abstract The use of electronic media has increased in early childhood. During early childhood, language and motor skills are important for the development of other cognitive skills. Therefore, it becomes essential to study how the use of screens is associated with these important skills in the first years of life. The objective of the following research was to describe the use of electronic media (i. e., TV, cell phone and tablet) and its association with language and developmental milestones in the first years of life. Participants were 253 primary caregivers of infants between 2 to 48 months (M = 30.17 months, SD = 10.82, female = 124). Parental reports of infant media use, motor and language development milestones, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) and the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) for sociodemographic variables were used. The results showed that, on average, infants began to use screens during the first year of life at an average of one hour per day with TV as the most used medium and video viewing as the activity they did the most. The number of hours of devices usage was positively associated with lexical density and sentence use. Furthermore, starting device use at a later age was associated with lower scores in language reports and later milestones of motor and language development. No differences were found based on the type of device content and sociodemographic variables. Results indicate that the excessive use of screens could affect some early skills, although it is necessary to investigate the context in which they are used.
Resumen En los últimos años, el uso de medios electrónicos ha aumentado en la infancia temprana debido al creciente acceso a las pantallas y a la situación de aislamiento ocasionado por la pandemia de COVID-19. Por otro lado, durante la primera infancia, las habilidades de lenguaje y motrices son fundamentales para el desarrollo de otras habilidades cognitivas, y se asocian con el rendimiento académico y habilidades sociales posteriores durante la niñez y adolescencia. Por ende, se vuelve fundamental estudiar cómo el contexto de estimulación en el hogar, específicamente el uso de pantallas, se asocia con estas habilidades importantes en los primeros años de vida. Si bien existen investigaciones sobre las asociaciones del uso de pantallas con habilidades cognitivas tempranas, son escasas las que indagan este fenómeno en el ámbito latinoamericano, y nulas las que lo realizaron en el actual contexto de pandemia. El objetivo de esta investigación fue describir el uso de medios electrónicos (i. e., TV, teléfono celular y tablet) y su asociación con el lenguaje y los hitos del desarrollo en los primeros años de vida. Los participantes fueron 253 cuidadores primarios de infantes de Latinoamérica (68.8 % de Argentina, y 31.2 % de otros países de la región) con edades entre 2 y 48 meses (M = 30.17 meses, SD = 10.82, femenino = 124), reclutados vía web a través de muestreo no probabilístico de tipo intencional y por bola de nieve. Se utilizaron los reportes de los padres sobre el uso de medios electrónicos (i. e., tiempo de uso, edad de inicio y tipo de contenido), los hitos del desarrollo motor y del lenguaje, el Inventario de Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (CDI) (i. e., densidad léxica y uso de oraciones) y la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (EPH) para evaluar las variables sociodemográficas. Los resultados mostraron que, en promedio, los infantes comenzaron a usar pantallas durante el primer año de vida en un promedio de una hora por día, con la televisión como el medio más utilizado y la visualización de videos la actividad que más realizaban. El número de horas de uso de dispositivos se asoció positivamente con la densidad léxica y el uso de oraciones: a más horas de uso, mayor cantidad de palabras y oraciones reportadas. Además, cuanto más tardía era la edad de inicio de uso de dispositivos, más bajas eran las puntuaciones en los informes lingüísticos e hitos posteriores del desarrollo motor y del lenguaje. Los tamaños del efecto para estas asociaciones fueron de bajos a moderados, lo que indica que otras variables podrían estar contribuyendo al desarrollo de estas habilidades cognitivas. No se encontraron diferencias en las capacidades motrices y del lenguaje en función del tipo de contenido del dispositivo. Tampoco se observaron diferencias en el uso de pantallas en función del género de los infantes, la edad y las variables sociodemográficas, lo que podría indicar, tal como demostraron investigaciones anteriores, que durante el aislamiento por COVID-19 el uso de los medios electrónicos fue constante, independientemente del contexto del hogar. Los resultados indican que el uso excesivo de pantallas podría afectar, tanto de forma positiva como negativa, algunas habilidades tempranas, aunque es necesario investigar el contexto en el que se utilizan. Específicamente, para futuras investigaciones sería importante: (a) trabajar con díadas de cuidadores-infantes, para evaluar cómo los comportamientos parentales moderan las asociaciones entre uso de pantallas y cognición infantil; (b) realizar estudios longitudinales; y (c) evaluar estas variables en diferentes provincias del país y regiones de Latinoamérica, para estudiar cómo las idiosincrasias culturales modulan el uso de estos dispositivos.
RESUMO
Recent work within early executive function (EF) seems to suggest that toddlers show distinct patterns of development, involving poorly correlated performance across EF tasks and significant improvements over relatively short periods of time. The present study sought to extend these findings by investigating evidence for these patterns in toddlers and the existence of more traditional patterns of EF (e.g., correlations between tasks, links to language) when using the same tasks in a novel Latin American sample. Eighty toddlers (18-24 months) and sixty young preschoolers (30-36) months completed a battery of EF tasks, early social communication, and receptive and expressive language measures. Results indicated that toddlers showed similar distinct patterns of development (i.e., few relations between tasks and links to responding to joint attention), but by early preschool a more cohesive EF and links to language were present. Further, work demonstrated significant age (older children outperformed younger children), gender (girls outperformed boys), and socioeconomic differences (satisfied basic needs outperformed unsatisfied basic needs, but only on the snack delay). This work provides evidence for patterns of emerging EF development within this novel cultural sample (and evidence for group differences) that may be supported by communicative and representational development.
Assuntos
Função Executiva , Idioma , Adolescente , Atenção , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Feminino , Hispânico ou Latino , Humanos , América Latina/epidemiologia , MasculinoRESUMO
Although a growing body of work has established developing regulatory abilities during the second year of life, more work is needed to better understand factors that influence this emerging control. The purpose of the present study was to examine regulation capacities in executive functions (i.e., EF or cognitive control) and emotion regulation (i.e., ER or control focused on modulating negative and sustaining positive emotions) in a Latin American sample, with a focus on how joint attention, social vulnerability, and temperament contribute to performance. Sixty Latin American dyads of mothers and children aged 18 to 24 months completed several EF tasks, a Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) to examine ER (Weinberg et al., 2008), and the Early Social Communication Scale to measure joint attention (Mundy et al., 2003). Parents completed the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form to measure temperament (ECBQ-VS, Putnam et al., 2010) and the Social Economic Level Scale (SES) from INDEC (2000). Results revealed the typical responses expected for toddlers of this age in these EF tasks and in the SFP. Also, we found associations between EF and ER and between non-verbal communication related to monitoring infants' attention to objects (i.e., responding to joint attention) and initiation of pointing (e.g., pointing and showing of an object while the child alternates his gaze to an adult) with EF. Regarding social factors, family differences and type of housing contribute to regulation. For temperament, effortful control was associated with both regulatory capacities. Finally, only age predicted EF. These results suggest that many patterns regarding the development of these abilities are duplicated in the first months of life in a Latin American sample while further highlighting the importance of considering how the environment and the individual characteristics of infants may associate to these regulatory abilities, which is particularly relevant to developing public policies to promote their optimal development.