Investigation of possible consequences of excessive screen-based media use and low quality of parent–child book interactions for the attention, visual perception and language development

The purpose of this multiple-case study was to investigate the possible consequences of excessive screen-based media use and low quality of mother–child book interaction experiences for the attention, visual perception and language development with particular focus on the period of early childhood. To achieve this, we firstly used Frankfurter Test für Fünfjährige - Konzentration, FTF-K, Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception (DTVP), the Hamburger Instrument for the Analysis of the Language Level of 5-years old (HAVAS 5) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) with 24 healthy preschool children (12 girls and 12 boys) without developmental delay (and without autism, without ADHD etc.). In addition, the children were divided into two subgroups; the focus children of high performance group (n=6, 3 girls, 3 boys) and the focus children of low performance group (n=6, 3 girls, 3 boys). Furthermore, a semi-structured interview (SSI) form was developed by the author and finally conducted with the mothers of both focus groups in order to obtain the essential information about the excessive screen-based media use and interaction experiences of the children with the books. Findings revealed that the excessive screen-based media use and poor book-child interactions might notable be suspected of having some negative influence on concentration, visual perception and language proficiency of preschoolers. Our qualitative results suggest that children who exposured to screen-based media especially by 0–24 months of age (and during the following years) had low quality of mother–child book reading experiences across early childhood had low scores on rate of concentration, visual perception and showed lower level language proficiency, especially in the realm of vocabulary acquisition. Our study results show also that the majority of the high performance group may not have any screen-based media exposure by 0–24 months (limited use during the following years) and higher quality of child-book interaction experiences. They also showed an advanced level of language proficiency and had high scores in all categories Keywords: early childhood, screen-based media, mother–child book reading experiences, concentration, visual perception, language proficiency