A young child's use of multiple technologies in the social organisation of a pretend telephone conversation

This chapter contributes understandings of how a young child constructs her simultaneous use of multiple technologies so that her orientation to one occasions and informs her use of another. It illustrates the interplay between technologies as they are used by the child to socially organise and produce a pretend telephone call. Data are drawn from a video recording made by the child’s mother in their home. In the recording, the child views a Barbie™ YouTube video while simultaneously constructing a pretend telephone conversation with Barbie on a toy mobile phone. The sociological perspectives of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis are used to produce detailed descriptions of the child’s talk and embodied actions using the technologies. Analysis reveals how the interplay between technologies is developed in the child’s orientation, via gaze, gesture and talk, to each device. Discussion establishes that the child’s meaning-making of the video is integral to her construction of her telephone conversation. It highlights how the child displays interactional competencies and knowledge of how people interact over the phone to accomplish her social world

Electronic gaming: Associations with self-regulation, emotional difficulties and academic performance

Drawing on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), this chapter reports on the use of electronic games by young children (8-9 years old) and the associations with cognitive self-regulation, academic performance (mathematics, language and literacy) and emotional difficulties two years later when children were 10-11 years of age. Results indicated that, compared to children who played electronic games for 120 minutes or less per week, playing games for between 121 and 240 minutes per week was associated with better scores on Language and Literacy and Mathematical Thinking at 10 to 11 years of age. Conversely, use of electronic games for more than an hour per day (more than 421 minutes per week) was associated with lower cognitive self-regulation and an increase in emotional difficulties at 10-11 years of age