Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood (PDF)

Rachel Barr, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University and Director of the Georgetown Early Learning Project. Dr. Barr received her Ph.D. from the University of Otago, New Zealand. She is primarily interested in how children bridge the gap between what they learn from media and how they apply that information in the real world. She has written frequently about the Transfer deficit which is the consistent finding that infants and toddlers learn less from television and touchscreens than from face-to-face interactions due to memory constraints and also how the transfer deficit can be ameliorated by including repetition, additional language cues and appropriate use of television features to enhance learning. She has also examined how parents can facilitate learning from both touchscreens and television. Finally, she has provided developmental expertise while working with media developers and she has collaborated on a project that has used media content as part of an early intervention parenting program for incarcerated teen fathers.
Deborah Nichols Linebarger, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Human Development and Director of the Children's Media Lab at Purdue University. Dr. Linebarger received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin. She is primarily interested in the interface between children's cognitive development (i.e., learning, language and early literacy skills, executive function) and educational media and how and whether these relations vary by important demographic and social indicators including poverty status, culturally- and linguistically-diverse populations, age, and location of residence (e.g., rural or urban). To examine this interface, she conducts descriptive work to detail media access and use patterns and relations among these patterns and child development; micro-level experimental work to detect the features used in media that direct attention and contribute to content comprehension; and macro-level

“This book examines how children are affected by media exposure of all types and the implications for research and early childhood development strategies. … This book would be of most interest to clinicians, researchers, and professionals in early childhood development, mental health, and social sciences, as well as academicians in the field of educational psychology and graduate psychology courses.” (Michael S. Goldsby, Doody's Book Reviews, September, 2017)