Interactive technologies to promote learning

Executive Summary

• The educative value of interactive technologies has been questioned mainly because most of them lack of science-based regulations and recommendations.
• In primary school and adolescence playing video games, a particular type of interactive technology, associates to positive effects on attention, long-term memory and executive functions. The cognitive gains are associated with changes in brain structure and/or brain function.
• In school children and adolescents with genetic susceptibilities, playing videogames may associate to risk of internet gaming and behavioral disorders.
• In preschoolers the available data suggest that interactive technologies benefit cognitive abilities and learning.
• Interactive technologies used with regulations may constitute useful tools to support teacher activities at the classroom and at home when children have not high risk of behavioral disorders.

Introduction

Do preschool children’ cognitive abilities benefit from playing with interactive technologies? There are not clear data-based answers for this question, mainly because the research on the subject is still to scarce. However, recent studies report more gains than loses^1,2, at least at short-term, which can be perceived as an opportunity due to the increase of digital tools in many societies.

Interactive technologies

Human beings have developed technologies from their origins. However, a real revolution of interactive technology in almost every field of the modern life has occurred just in the last three decades. Interactive apps should be perceived as radically different than passive exposure to screen devices such as television or movies³. Contrary to passive exposure, the use of apps implemented in tablets and smart phones would call the child to interact. Is that interactivity a crucial feature that made interactive technologies much attractive this type of technology to children as much as to adults. The interaction in adaptive apps provide an environment with certain incertitude about the future because the answer of the app varies depending on the cognitive strategies of the user, and supply challenges and rewards which together would enhance the curiosity, attention and interest of the user along many sessions. These properties make the apps promising tool to promote educative contents.

However, the research exploring the impact on cognition and the brain of educational apps is still too scarce limiting the possibility to build data-based recommendations and regulations. In contrast, the literature about the effects on the brain and cognitive plasticity of playing videogames for fun is abundant, providing a start point for the analysis. Indeed, video games are the most developed products of interactive technologies, and albeit hundreds of thousands of videogames declares to be educational in different commercial platforms, almost all of them have not been experimentally demonstrated this role in any sense^4. Currently there is a general agreement that playing non-educative video games can both, benefits and impairs behavior and cognition and differentially shapes the brain, depending on the design of the game itself as well as on the susceptibility of the player⁵.

Thus, in the recent years the research has been aimed at evaluating the possibility that using apps implemented on interactive devices may associate with gains or losses on learning relevant for education, and whether the practice of this type of tool may shape the young human’s brain.

Cognitive gains associated with video game practice

Videogames provide adaptive cognitive challenges, require tuning cognitive functions such as attention or executive control, and associate with high levels of reward for hits and negative feelings for failures. Videogames may attract humans because they may somehow encourage the discovery of our own limits. Indeed, metacognition involves the reasoning about the cognitive processes and strategies we use to confront problems. Metacognition relies on executive functions⁶ and executive functions would benefit by practicing videogames⁷, where executive functions comprise the mental capacities to focus attention, remember instructions, make plans and handle multiple tasks successfully.

Moreover, recent studies indicate that videogame players who report high levels of positive psychosocial involvement with gaming, the levels of well-being are larger and the biological response to stress smaller, suggesting that games with pro-social activities may contribute to attenuate the negative effects of stress⁸

In line with these results, other studies report that video games can contribute to modulate pain perception during chemotherapy cycles for children^{9, 10} by providing a cognitive distraction.

Negative effects attributed to playing video games.

Video games have been associated with many negative effects.

One of the most alarming negative effect is the internet gaming disorder, which exhibits brain changes similar to that observed in substance use disorder and drug addiction. Indeed, most studies report that video games enhance the activity of brain networks associated with motivation¹¹ and reduce the levels of cortisol after the gaming task¹². Together, playing video games improves the reward and reduces stress.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in motivation and reward. In the case of internet game disorder, although the subjects show an increased level of Dopamine this is associated with a reduction in the levels of the Dopamine receptors D2 in the striatum^{13, 14} and a reduced striatal DA transporter (DAT) availability¹⁵. Together these patterns of Dopamine generate a disequilibrium similar to those observed in substance use disorder where the reward is never enough¹⁶. However, as many other addictive difficulties, the internet gaming disorder could be more expressed in persons with genetic susceptibility¹⁷, with particular games, and/or in persons who have experienced adverse environmental conditions.

The second more worrying negative effect is the eventual relationship between violent video game practice and aggression, although the research comparing the impact of playing violent and non-violent video games on aggression leads to inconsistent data. Some studies have shown that adolescents who play more violent video games show more provocative and risky behaviors at school¹⁸. In contrast, other studies have shown that, similar to addiction, this relationship seems more related to genetic susceptibility or environmental factors than a consequence of practicing video violent games¹⁹. Aggressive persons may be more attracted by violent games. Moreover, some studies suggest that violent video games may help players to manage stressful situations²⁰ and may even help children to be less aggressive in the real life because they have experienced violence in a virtual format. Together, although more longitudinal research is necessary to explore a causal relationship between violent video games and aggressive behaviors, most current data would support the current vision that no association between violent video games and aggressive behaviours²¹.

Brain changes associated with playing videogames

It is important to recall that just a few video games and educative apps have been studies from the point of view of cognitive neuroscience. However, in global, playing video games in a regulated way (e.g. limiting the hours per day and per weeks) would benefit the brain ability to process incoming information at least by training the neural networks involved in selective attention, attentional control, motivation and consolidation in long-term memory. Some of those gains have been measured associated with changes in the brain structure and/or brain function²².

Concerning the long-term memory, young adults who have long experience playing non-violent video games, such as Super Mario, exhibit larger hippocampus, a brain structure involved on consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory²³. Notably, a recent study shows that the size of the hippocampus depends on the strategies that the player uses to navigate in the game. When the participant apply hippocampus based strategies, i.e. organizing spatial mapping experiences in memory. the size of the hippocampus increases²⁴.

The gains in attention comprise better attentional control when processing visual-spatial stimuli.  Video game players display faster behavioral responses associated with higher suppression response to irrelevant information, measured as smaller electrical response of the brain to distractors^{25, 26}, and as a reduction of the activity at the medial part of the temporal cortex, involved in the processing of the movement of visual stimuli²⁷.

Additionally, trained gamers would require less effort to activate and maintain attention to the task’s goal, partially because video game players have an enhanced connectivity between the brain networks processing goal-directed tasks, such as executive networks at the prefrontal lobes, and saliency networks, which integrates at least sensory, emotional and salient information of the stimuli²⁸.

Together, the available data, mostly not longitudinal, indicate that playing video games for fun associate with gains in some cognitive abilities which are also accompanied by changes in the structure and specialized functions of the brain.

Interactive technologies as tools supporting early education

Knowing that playing video games affects cognition and the brain in children and adults, it is relevant to explore whether cognition may associate with benefits on learning at preschool age. Recent studies, mostly done in laboratory environments, have shown that interactive technologies implemented in tablets are radically different to the passive exposure to television and videos at preschool age. Moreover, the studies have shown more benefits than no-effects or impairments when preschool children are trained to learn particular task.

For instance, a recent study comprising the review of 36 empirical articles evaluating the learning of 2 to 5-year-olds children (total n = 4,206), in reading, pre-reading, math, science, technology and social abilities, shows an overall significant gain in learning¹. Similar to that observed in school children and adolescents, the gains are moderated by other factors such as age, the learning material domain and the experimental environment (e.g. laboratory versus school). A second study reviewing 19 studies in 861 children between the same age range, found similar results but remarked the role of adults when playing with these non-commercial apps. Indeed, the participation of an adult during playing the game, by encouraging the child to play, making the child noticing that what happen is the game is important for the adult and providing social feedback, increase the gains in learning in any issue, emphasizing the social nature of the teaching-learning processing² at early ages.

In line with these data, our scientific team has also explored the subject but in a couple of longitudinal studies. We applied an intervention comprising playing with an app during eight sessions, 15 min-long each, administrated every other day and minimally supervised by an early educator (Figure 1). The app taught new vocabulary (new word-object associations by using infrequent words such as narwhal associated with a image-video of the narwhal), trained letter-sounds associations and encouraged vocalizations in 253 children aged at 2 and 3.5 years. The app offered a ludic environment, guided by videos of a real educator activated by the child when touching the screen and provided social feedback in every step. Our results showed that playing with the app causally associate with higher gain in communication at 2 years and higher gain in comprehensive and expressive vocabulary at 3.5 years of age²⁹.

Figure 1. The app was implemented in a tablet placed in a soft pillow-like support. Each session took place in a quiet room. The training was applied individually to each child. A trained early educator minimally supervised the playing session, paused, restarted and stopped the session when necessary and register the vocalizations by using a remote tutor Tablet. The picture illustrates a ~3.5-year-old child playing with the app.

Interactive technologies as an educational opportunity

Interactive technologies such as smart phones are every day more accessible to adults even from low socio-economic level, and more accepted as valuable tools to obtain information, increasing their probabilities to be also accepted for education.

In 2017 in the U. S. A. it was reported that 95% of families with children younger than 8 years have a smartphone, 78% have a tablet, and 42% of children have their own tablet device. Moreover, 71% parents report that they have downloaded apps for their children to use; 67% parents whose children use screen media say it helps their child’s learning, and 80% of them declare to be satisfied with the amount and quality of educational screen media available in internet for their children³⁰.

Similarly, at the school, the interactive technologies have been more accepted as an educative tool to support teaching at the classroom³¹. Interactive technologies have been also useful to support education in situations such as when family is not available to support teaching at home or when in-person activities are restricted because chronic absenteeism such as the one imposed by the confinement associated with SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Most educational systems all over the world were not prepared to confront with success the remote format of early education. However, the challenges of the sanitary world crisis allowed the school systems to implement and catalyze innovations in education to promote the continuity of learning at home through interactive apps³².

The interactive technologies for young minds

Infants and preschoolers are inherently curios and attracted by interactivity. They are permanently exploiting this curiosity and interest to learn³³. Moreover, humans are endowed from its origins to not only passively process the stimuli they perceive but also to interpret them and create from this interaction a unique mental representation of their learning and knowledge³⁴. In this scenario, the interactive technologies can provide an attractive source of information that preschoolers can exploit to learn at their own rhythm by manipulating with their hands, controlling with their voices and finally adapting to their minds. Supervised by teachers and parents the interactive technologies may serve as valuable tools to promote learning beyond simple associations but fostering imagination, predictive thinking, making and testing hypotheses, and hopefully the capacity of learning to learn from preschool ages.

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