Coulanges, Linsah Emilie
(2024)
Educational Screen Time and Young Children: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
The ubiquity of screen time (ST) for young children has prompted extensive investigation of its impacts on child development. Extant experimental work has demonstrated that educational ST and interactive educational ST have positive impacts on children’s academic skills, but very limited work has examined these associations in naturalistic settings. Even less work has examined whether self-regulatory skills support children’s learning through educational ST. Additionally, much of the existing qualitative work investigating parents’ attitudes have focused on ST more generally, with little focus on attitudes towards educational ST specifically. The current project places an emphasis on the role of educational ST and parent attitudes about educational ST by drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from a longitudinal study of 4-year-old children. In study 1, I deployed time diary data to measure children’s educational ST and interactive educational ST as well as direct assessments of children’s math, spatial, and literacy skills. I found that children’s educational ST at age 4 was significantly predictive of literacy skills measured at age 5, but there were no significant findings related to interactive educational ST or interactions with self-regulation skills. In study 2, I used qualitative data to explore parents’ attitudes associated with educational ST and whether there were qualitative differences between parents’ attitudes as a function of their children’s use of educational ST. I found generally that parents held mostly positive attitudes about educational ST, but several barriers to encouraging its use were identified. Few qualitative differences in how parents described their educational ST attitudes surfaced. Together, these results suggest that educational ST used at home may promote children’s literacy skills, and parents’ positive attitudes about educational ST may not necessarily translate into behavior.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
| Creators | Email | Pitt Username | ORCID  |
|---|
| Coulanges, Linsah Emilie | lic127@pitt.edu | lic127 | |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
19 December 2024 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
29 October 2024 |
| Approval Date: |
19 December 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
5 December 2024 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
167 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
educational screen time, academic skills, preschool |
| Date Deposited: |
19 Dec 2024 21:00 |
| Last Modified: |
19 Dec 2024 21:00 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/47135 |
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