Abstract:

Children in the 21st century are more users of technology, than generations past ever. With such an increase in use, researchers are paying close attention to the consequences of technology use and how it affects children's cognitive and physical development. Studies often show very small correlations between technology use and children's outcomes; whether technology causes these outcomes is not yet clear.

Several groups working on children's health advocate for partial or total restrictions on screen time for children and adolescents (e.g. AAP guidelines).

In contrast, some research cites a possible "Goldilocks effect" on technology use. They suggest that moderate participation in online and digital activities may be beneficial for subjective mental well-being (Przybylski and Weinstein, 2017). 'Problematic' or 'excessive' technology use may be defined by whether the use interferes with normal daily functions and is difficult to control, rather than by the absolute amount of exposure (Howard-Jones, 2011).

Further research is needed to accurately map the impact of ICT use.

Research on the relationship between ICT use and cognitive functioning has been ongoing at Eszterházy Károly Catholic University since 2014.

In our presentation, we will present the results of two exploratory studies on how children's abilities, learning and school achievement change at different ages as a function of the frequency of ICT use.

In each age group, we distinguished between low, medium and high ICT use subgroups and compared the results of ability tests and learning characteristics on this basis.
Research shows that more frequent computer use can lead to faster reaction times in almost all tasks. In the measured skill areas, there is statistical evidence of a trend towards higher scores for average computer users in several skill tests.

Our research results show that only the verbal ability in storytelling is the area where those who used ICT tools less showed significantly better results.

This was the reason why the second phase of the research series was designed to investigate the relationship between ICT use and speech and language development.

We hypothesise that children who use ICT tools for longer periods of time in early childhood will have lower levels of language development in the expressive language subtests of the screening procedure.

The study covered nearly 500 preschool-aged children. In our research method, in addition to screening speech at the age of 5, we also used an ICT usage questionnaire.

The first data of the research show that the children who used the ICT devices for a shorter time achieved better results in most of the subtests of the speech screening.

The results will be presented in detail at the conference.

Keywords:

ICT use, children's abilities, verbal skills.