Neural basis of learning from television in young children

Abstract

Abstract It has been shown that preschool children can learn as well from video presentations as from live presentations in word acquisition, action imitation, and object searching. Several cognitive theories have been proposed to explain the developmental changes accompanying the onset of learning from TV, but the underlying neural mechanism is unclear. One possible mechanism is the mirror-matching system, in which observation of action recruits an observer׳s internal motor representation of the same action. Using near-infrared spectroscopy, we examined whether sensorimotor regions are activated when children learn rule-based actions from a live model versus a televised model. The results revealed that children learned the actions equally well from both live and televised models, but activations in the left sensorimotor regions were marginally stronger when learning from the live model than from the televised model. These results may contribute to our understanding of how to support children׳s learning from television.