Let’s Chat: On-Screen Social Responsiveness Is Not Sufficient to Support Toddlers’ Word Learning From Video

In this study, 176 toddlers in two age groups (24 months and 30 months) were charged with learning the name of a novel object and putting it in a bin. They were studied under these four conditions: Responsive live: the person making the request was present and engaged with the child; Unresponsive video: the speaker on the screen looked at the camera and smiled at scripted times; Unresponsive live: although present, the speaker behaved as she did on the unresponsive video; and Responsive video: a speaker on closed-circuit video engaged with the child, just as they might on video chat. The researchers found that the toddlers in both age groups reliably learned the toy’s name in the responsive live condition, and older toddlers learned in the unresponsive live condition. But neither group learned in either of the video conditions. The researchers believe that’s because to toddlers, a flat image of a person on a screen isn’t “real,” so their brains tell them what they are seeing isn’t personally relevant and not something they can learn from. Even though video chat includes more communicative social cues and interaction than a nonresponsive video, the medium still was not sufficient to support learning in the study.