Abstract
Smartphone technology is becoming abundant in most college settings. Researchers were interested to see how students with no prior experience using smartphones thought they affected their education. The longitudinal study in the academic year 2010–2011 focused on first-time smartphone users at a major research university. Prior to the study, the participants were given no training on smartphone use and were asked to answer several questions about how they thought a smartphone would affect their school-related tasks. The students then received iPhones, and their phone use was monitored during the following year. At the end of the study, the students answered the same questions.
When participants were asked to rate their feelings on the following statements specifically related to learning outcomes, such as homework, test-taking, and grades, they provided the following answers (1 represents strongly disagree and 5 represents strongly agree):
My iPhone will help/helped me get better grades—In 2010, the average answer was 3.71; in 2011, the average answer was 1.54.
My iPhone will distract/distracted me from school-related tasks—In 2010, the average answer was 1.91; in 2011, the average answer was 4.03.
The iPhone will help/helped me do well on academic tests—In 2010, the average answer was 3.88; in 2011, the average answer was 1.68.
The iPhone will help/helped me do well with my homework—In 2010, the average answer was 3.14; in 2011, the average answer was 1.49.
The research revealed that although users initially believed the mobile devices would improve their ability to perform well with homework and tests and ultimately get better grades, the opposite was reported at the end of the study.—Tossell, C. C., Kortum, P., Shepard, C., Rahmati, A., & Zhong, L. (2015). You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him learn: Smartphone use in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46, 713–724. doi:10.1111/bjet.12176
Emotion Knowledge Fosters Attentiveness
Young children, who possess a good understanding of their own emotions and of those of their fellow human beings early on, suffer fewer attention problems than their peers with a lower emotional understanding. The findings stem from the research project conducted in Germany and Fairfax, Virginia. Parents of 261 children in kindergarten completed surveys at the beginning and end of the year. The capacity to understand emotions, behavioral self-regulation, complex memory span, and receptive language comprehension were tested. The children’s sociodemographic background and gender were also taken into account.
The investigation focused on the question as to what factors facilitate or inhibit kindergarteners in learning to master their attention. The study showed that children, who possessed a comprehensive knowledge of emotions at the time of the first survey, experienced fewer difficulties mastering their attention a good year later, compared with those who initially had a low knowledge of emotions. The decrease in attention problems in children with extensive emotion knowledge goes even beyond age-related decline. Emotion knowledge defines the ability to recognize emotions in oneself and others and verbalize them, as well as control one’s own emotional behavioral expression. Children with limited emotion knowledge often seem distracted. Their attention is occupied by the explanation of their own confusing emotional states, the negative emotions of their fellow human beings, and the regulation of their own resulting emotions. The study expands previous research findings on the development of attention-deficit problems in children. The previously common assumption in research was that a deficit in executive functions (EF) was especially crucial for the development of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). EF develops in preschool and includes the volitional control of attention, working memory, and ability to suppress cognitive and motor impulses, also called interference control. This study demonstrated that, in addition to EF, emotion knowledge is a key explanatory factor for the development of attention problems.—http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150706090043.htm
Predicting Literacy Learning
A quick biological test may be able to identify children who have literacy challenges or learning disabilities long before they learn to read. Preliterate children whose brains inefficiently process speech against a background of noise are more likely than their peers to have trouble with reading and language development when they reach school age. The study, which directly measured the brain’s response to sound using electroencephalography (EEG), is one of the first to find the deleterious effect in preliterate children. This suggests that the brain’s ability to process the sounds of consonants in noise is fundamental for language and reading development. Speech and communication often occur in noisy places, environments that tax the brain. Noise particularly affects the brain’s ability to hear consonants, rather than vowels, because consonants are said very quickly and vowels are acoustically simpler. Noisy environments, such as homes with blaring televisions and wailing children, loud classrooms, or urban streetscapes, can disrupt brain mechanisms associated with literacy development in school-aged children. If the brain’s response to sound is not optimal, it cannot keep up with the fast, difficult computations required to process in noise. Everyday listening experiences bootstrap language development by cluing children in on which sounds are meaningful. If a child cannot make meaning of these sounds through the background noise, he or she will not develop the linguistic resources needed when reading instruction begins.
In the study, EEG wires were placed on children’s scalps; this allowed the researchers to assess how the brain reacted to the sound of the consonants. In the right ear, the participants heard the sound “da” superimposed over the babble of six talkers. In the left ear, they heard the soundtrack of the movie of their choice, which was shown to keep them still. The researchers captured three different aspects of the brain’s response to sound: the stability with which the circuits were responding, the speed with which the circuits were firing, and the quality with which the circuits represented the timbre of the sound. Using these three pieces of information, they developed a statistical model to predict children’s performance on key early literacy tests. In a series of experiments with 112 kids between the ages of 3 and 14 years, the researchers found that their 30-min neurophysiological assessment predicted with a very high accuracy how a 3-year-old child will perform on multiple prereading tests, and how, a year later at age 4 years, he or she will perform across multiple language skills important for reading.—White-Schwoch, T., Woodruff Carr, K., Thompson, E. C., Anderson, S., Nicol, T., Bradlow, A. R., . . . Kraus, N. (2015). Auditory processing in noise: A preschool biomarker for literacy. PLoS Biology, 13(7), e1002196. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002196