A Preliminary Study of Screen-media, Empathizing, and Systemizing in Children

This study aims to examine the relationship between screen time and empathizing-systemizing cognitive styles. To date, the present study involved 197 parents of elementary school children in Indonesia, 7-11 years old. Parents completed several questionnaires addressing children’s screen-time, screen activities, and Empathizing-Systemizing Quotients (EQ-SQ Child). The results showed that children spent more than 4 hours on average per day with media use, infringes the rules by the American Pediatric Association about healthy duration screen activities for children. The research also found gender preferences toward screenactivities. Boys were reported engaged more with gaming and watching activities than girls. Regarding Empathizing-Systemizing cognitive styles, the result indicates a non-significant relationship between total screen time and Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S). However, a specific relation was found between the type of screen activities and the E-S. Watching activities (TV, videos, and movies), playing video games, and doing homework showed a negative relation with Empathizing. On the other side, watching activities is also related negatively with Systemizing. Moreover, Gaming was found to be correlated with the D-Score. The result highlights the clinical importance of examining the role of media on children development as the finding has suggested the role of media to the E-S cognitive styles, therefore indirectly explained the effects of screen-based media on the development of autism among children