Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences • Hacker News Board

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#51

Post by cik2e » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

This made me think of studies that correlate growing up playing fast-paced video games, shooters specifically if I recall, with better driving down the road (drumroll).

This correlates with my own experience, especially as I transitioned to defensive driving in my mid 20s. I am always keenly aware of what nearby cars are doing, especially on the highway, and have become great at anticipating driver stupidity. Things like a slight steering wiggle before trying to cut across multiple lanes to make an exist. I've averted countless accidents with this heightened awareness.

And on the other hand, there were multiple kids in high school who would ended up having 2-3 accidents in their first year of driving. Obviously there are tons of factors involved but I like to think that my devotion to CS and TFC weren't a complete waste of time.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#52

Post by svachalek » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #36

lordnacho wrote: post #17

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing the…

I can’t tell you how many time I think the iMac for signing vendors/guests into the building is a touchscreen even though I know iMac isn’t touch sensitive.

Yeah, I occasionally find myself tapping my MacBook's screen even though I was an adult before I ever encountered a touchscreen. It's just so natural it becomes reflex in no time at all.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#53

Post by jdietrich » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

Romanulus wrote: post #37

dx87 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.

Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.

>Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad.

Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology?

Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#54

Post by jdietrich » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

dublin wrote: post #47

lordnacho wrote: post #17

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing the…

A good study would be to compare how these screen-trained toddlers compare with screen-free toddlers (you might have to go rural to find those) in interacting and recognizing things in the real 3D world. My guess is that screenies exhibit a marked bias towards 2D perception and thinking, with weaker 3D.

Related: video gamers are better at performing keyhole surgery.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#55

Post by microtherion » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

natcombs wrote: post #2

I was thinking "attention" as in "attention deficit", but this test was "find a red apple amongst blue apples". They're not sure if finding red apples amongst blue apples is beneficial though: >> “What we need to know next is whether this attention difference is advantageous or detrimental to their everyday life.”

I'm sure that if they found that touchscreen users are worse at this task, they'd have little difficulty declaring this detrimental to their everyday life.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#56

Post by ryanmarsh » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

Somewhat related, kindergartners cannot sit upright all day and do not have the wrist strength to learn writing anymore. Many 5 year olds cannot grasp a pencil with their thumb and forefingers. They hold it more like a three year old, in a full hand grasp. Also, by mid-day the children cannot sit up any longer and tend to slump over in the chairs, laying against the table. These are not sleep deprived teens, they're usually full of energy at that age. The teachers told us that the first few months of kinder include an exercise regimen of core and wrist strength building just so they can sit up and hold a pencil. For instance, one of the exercises is a modified "cat cow" position (familiar to yogis).

Screen time is leading to more than attention differences, it appears it leads to physiological differences as well.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#57

Post by enobrev » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

Romanulus wrote: post #37

dx87 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.

Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.

I don't understand why it's sad. Isn't it an attempt at approaching new things with an understanding of previous interactions?

Say you give a child a maraca, and s/he learns that s/he can shake the maraca to make noise. Then you hand a child a block, s/he is going to shake the block to see if it makes noise. The interesting bit and teachable moment is that these things have different features and properties and we interact with them differently, and thus we use them for different things. How does a touchscreen fall outside of that?

I say this as a recent parent who is hesitant to introduce screens and approaching the subject carefully.

Also, that video is hilarious, and it's clearly for the best that he's been pulled over.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#58

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #17

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing the…

[deleted]

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#59

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

crmrc114 wrote: post #14

So, per this page: "The study followed them over the next 2.5 years, bringing them into the lab at 18 months and 3.5 years. At the 18-month and 3.5-year visits, toddlers took part in a computer task in which they were trained to search for a red apple amongst a varying number of either blue apples (easy search), or blue apples and red apple slices (difficult search). An eye tracker monitored their gaze and visually r…

The same sort of stuff was said about the 80s kids in my cohort because we were "latchkey" kids and watching lots of TV. It was bullshit then and bullshit now.

I don't put much stock in intelligence assessments. There's no real standards around the exams. My school placed you in cohorts based on IQ, and it was pretty obvious that the scoring system was measuring something other than your innate ability. My dad worked in civil service for many years, where promotions and appointments are governed by exams that were a combination of grammar tests and proxies for IQ exams. I didn't see any evidence that those assessments did anything other than reducing patronage and making it harder for non-native speakers to move up the ladder.

Re: Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences

#60

Post by enobrev » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #39

vmception wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I noticed my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly have GUI buttons on them but can only be used by the corresponding physical button on the side, or in some random other place nearby. Be nice if they did both if use while driving and not looking at that interface is the concern. I want to sink all of those cars.…

The car I have allows both touching the elements on the screen as well as using physical knobs and levers to control the same elements. When it was new, I found myself reaching for the screen, but now that it has some age on it, the physical controls win every time. Which leads me to believe that touch is better for discoverability, but not general use. Which kind of mirrors my experience using computers with physica…

I feel like a hybrid would be excellent. A big, advanced system built into a touchscreen UI, with a series of physical buttons and knobs around / beneath that can control that UI - with the ability to adjust presets for those physical knobs and buttons to driver-preference

Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.