While it is commonly believed that 'interactive' media provides benefits to young
children not obtained from 'non-interactive' media, there has been little research
examining this issue, or the kinds of interactivity that elicit these benefits. The present
study examined the attention, comprehension, and enjoyment of young children viewing
different kinds of interactive television programs compared with those of children
viewing the control prototype (non-interactive) programs. Three interactive prototypes
and one control prototype of Dora the Explorer, Hi-5, and Play School were examined
on these outcome measures. The interactive prototypes allowed participants to make
simple choices about program content using a television remote control. Four hundred
and ninety eight children aged four (49.4%) and five (50.6%) years individually viewed
one of the prototypes, and the childrens attention, comprehension, and enjoyment were
examined. Participants were boys (49.7%) and girls (50.3%) drawn from Government
(64.9%), Catholic (27.6%) and Independent (7.4%) schools in Perth, Western Australia.
Significantly higher attention, comprehension, or both were found for children
interacting with two of the prototypes allowing increased viewer participation compared
to children viewing the control prototype prototypes. Interactive prototypes allowing
participants to repeat sections of program content also elicited significantly higher
comprehension than control prototypes. However, interactive prototypes allowing
participants to customise aspects of the program did not result in differences in the
outcome measures compared with control prototypes. It was also found that interactive
prototypes offering participants narrative choices were associated with significantly
lower attention, comprehension or enjoyment for either interacting or non-interacting
participants compared to the control prototypes. It is argued that interactivity, per se,
does not bestow any benefits, with only specific models of interactivity resulting in
higher comprehension or attention. In fact, some applications allowing young children to make choices about program narrative appears to disrupt program comprehension. It
is concluded that successful interactivity builds upon the features of well-designed
traditional children's television; opportunities for increased participation, and the
repetition of content.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221869 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | ann.hynd@uwa.edu.au, Anna Ruth Hynd |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Anna Ruth Hynd |
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