NurseryWorld – Prof Annette Karmiloff-Smith and Dr Richard House
Do ICT and multimedia in the early years have positive potential, or are they a danger to development? Here, two experts make their case.
FOR
Touchscreens and TV are here to stay, so let’s explore their positive features, says Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, University of London
Touchscreen use is growing at a phenomenal rate. A recent survey indicates that UK family ownership of touchscreens increased from 7 per cent in 2011 to a whopping 71 per cent in 2014 (Ofcom, 2014), with the likelihood of it soon reaching nearly 100 per cent. Instead of indulging in emotional reactions about the potential negative influence of touchscreens, let’s explore their potential positive impact on child development.
What makes touchscreen devices different from other toys? Why are infants and toddlers (and older children) so fascinated by them? Why are children with ADHD quietly focused when using touchscreens (Stevens and Muslow, 2006)? Unlike passive TV watching, the child’s active interaction with touchscreen devices generates dynamic, contingent, audiovisual sensory stimulation.
The variety, frequency and complexity of the contingent responses from touchscreen devices far exceeds anything that books or traditional toys provide. These are facts that cannot be ignored even if, as parents and teachers, we do not welcome the ways in which touchscreen devices are engulfing childhood activities. In fact, touchscreen devices may actually generate heightened levels of cognitive activity compared to books and other toys.
AGAINST
We have to proceed with caution to avoid a developmental catastrophe, says Dr Richard House, academic, chartered psychologist and campaigner on early childhood
As last month marked the 70th anniversary of the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima, Japan, and its 140,000 population, I begin by mentioning the recent open letter, signed by Professors Stephen Hawking and Noam Chomsky and thousands of others, making a formidable ethical case for an international ban of ‘killer robots’ with AI.
Their plea graphically illustrates how we cannot assume that technological and scientific ‘progress’ is always necessarily beneficent for humankind. This needs spelling out because I so often hear a refrain of helpless resignation about ICT – for example, ‘Well, it’s part of the modern world, so we just have to accept it and work with it.’
I profoundly disagree. Unthought-through ideological commitments to technology are extremely dangerous. It’s an empirical and a developmental question as to whether ICT is appropriate for young children, and never something that we should blindly accept through robotic adherence to the new cultural myth that technology is always and necessarily a progressive force.
UNNECESSARY …
A simple way to summarise the arguments against early ICT is to say that in early childhood, it is unnecessary, inappropriate, and harmful.
Unnecessary: children will learn any ICT-related skills far more easily when their fine motor skills are well developed – and by then, many current technologies will likely be redundant anyway.
Inappropriate: is it necessary or appropriate for children’s early learning to be ‘accelerated’? Many authorities are fundamentally questioning this common assumption.
Harmful: apart from the alarming research findings reviewed by psychologist Dr Aric Sigman on ICT’s negative health effects (see ‘More information’), a core aspect of early experience is learning to be human. The real, human-relational and natural world is challenging for all human beings to understand. To confuse children when they have hardly begun to get a handle on this world, by introducing them to virtual, techno-magical worlds, is surely an absurd reversal of the natural order of things.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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