Yadav Savita, Chakraborty Pinaki, Kaul Arshia, Gupta Bhavya, Garg Anchal
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Netaji Subhas University of Technology, New Delhi, India.
Clin Exp Pediatr. 2020 Jun;63(6):232-236. doi: 10.3345/cep.2019.00997. Epub 2020 Feb 5.
Children today get access to smartphones at an early age. However, their ability to use mobile apps has not yet been studied in detail.
This study aimed to assess the ability of children aged 2-8 years to perform touchscreen gestures and follow prompting techniques, i.e., ways apps provide instructions on how to use them.
We developed one mobile app to test the ability of children to perform various touchscreen gestures and another mobile app to test their ability to follow various prompting techniques. We used these apps in this study of 90 children in a kindergarten and a primary school in New Delhi in July 2019. We noted the touchscreen gestures that the children could perform and the most sophisticated prompting technique that they could follow.
Two- and 3-year-old children could not follow any prompting technique and only a minority (27%) could tap the touchscreen at an intended place. Four- to 6-year-old children could perform simple gestures like a tap and slide (57%) and follow instructions provided through animation (63%). Sevenand 8-year-old children could perform more sophisticated gestures like dragging and dropping (30%) and follow instructions provided in audio and video formats (34%). We observed a significant difference between the number of touchscreen gestures that the children could perform and the number of prompting techniques that they could follow (F=544.0407, P<0.05). No significant difference was observed in the performance of female versus male children (P>0.05).
Children gradually learn to use mobile apps beginning at 2 years of age. They become comfortable performing single-finger gestures and following nontextual prompting techniques by 8 years of age. We recommend that these results be considered in the development of mobile apps for children.
如今的儿童在很小的年龄就开始接触智能手机。然而，他们使用移动应用程序的能力尚未得到详细研究。
本研究旨在评估2至8岁儿童执行触摸屏手势和遵循提示技术的能力，即应用程序提供如何使用它们的说明的方式。
我们开发了一个移动应用程序来测试儿童执行各种触摸屏手势的能力，以及另一个移动应用程序来测试他们遵循各种提示技术的能力。2019年7月，我们在新德里的一所幼儿园和一所小学对90名儿童进行了这项研究，使用了这些应用程序。我们记录了儿童能够执行的触摸屏手势以及他们能够遵循的最复杂的提示技术。
2岁和3岁的儿童无法遵循任何提示技术，只有少数（27%）能够在预期位置点击触摸屏。4至6岁的儿童能够执行简单的手势，如点击和滑动（57%），并遵循通过动画提供的说明（63%）。7岁和8岁的儿童能够执行更复杂的手势，如拖放（30%），并遵循以音频和视频格式提供的说明（34%）。我们观察到儿童能够执行的触摸屏手势数量与他们能够遵循的提示技术数量之间存在显著差异（F = 544.0407，P < 0.05）。在女童和男童的表现上未观察到显著差异（P > 0.05）。
儿童从2岁开始逐渐学习使用移动应用程序。到8岁时，他们能够自如地执行单指手势并遵循非文本提示技术。我们建议在开发儿童移动应用程序时考虑这些结果。
