U Can Touch This: How Tablets Can Be Used to Study Cognitive Development.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Touch screen devices like tablets are now ubiquitous in children's lives.
• There is limited understanding of their utility for scientific data collection in young populations.
• Tablets are suitable for behavioral data collection in children aged 1-10, bridging gaps in traditional research methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of touch screen tablets for collecting reliable scientific data in developmental psychology studies.
• To assess children's (ages 1-10) and adults' capabilities in interacting with tablet-based experimental paradigms.
• To analyze data quality metrics including completeness, accuracy, and response times.

Main Methods:

• Six studies utilized touch screen tablets to present various experimental tasks (sorting, recall, perception, visual search, extinction learning, visuo-spatial).
• Participants included children aged 1-10 and adult controls.
• Data were analyzed based on self-reported usage, data completeness, response accuracy, and response times.

Main Results:

• Children as young as two years old can effectively interact with tablets, understand tasks, and provide accurate responses.
• Tablet-based data collection demonstrated advantages in ease of use, portability, cost-effectiveness, and high participant engagement.
• Consistent data quality was observed across various tasks and age groups.

Conclusions:

• Touch screen tablets represent a powerful and versatile tool for conducting psychological research with young children.
• The findings highlight the potential to overcome methodological challenges in developmental research using tablet technology.
• Tablets facilitate engaging and reliable data acquisition, paving the way for innovative studies in child psychology.