Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education - Manipal, India.
Codas. 2024 Apr 29;36(3):e20230159. doi: 10.1590/2317-1782/20242023159en. eCollection 2024.
The overuse of screen-based devices results in developmental problems in children. Parents are an integral part of the children's language development. The present study explores the parental perspectives on the impact of screen time on the language skills of typically developing school-going children using a developed questionnaire.
192 parents of typically developing children between 6 and 10 years of age participated in the study. Phase 1 of the study included the development of a questionnaire targeting the impact of screen devices on language development. The questionnaire was converted into an online survey and was circulated among the parents in Phase 2. Descriptive statistics were performed on the retrieved data and a chi-square test was done to determine the association between the use of screen devices across all language parameters.
Parents reported television and smartphones to be the most used type of device, with a large proportion of children using screen-based devices for 1-2 hours per day. Most parents reported children prefer watching screens mainly for entertainment purposes, occasionally under supervision, without depending on them as potential rewards. The impact of screen-based devices on language skills has been discussed under the semantics, syntax, and pragmatic aspects of language.
The findings of this study will help identify the existing trends in the usage of screen-based devices by children, thereby identifying potential contributing factors towards language delays. This information will also benefit in parental counselling during the interventional planning of children with language delays.
过度使用屏幕设备会导致儿童发育问题。父母是儿童语言发展的重要组成部分。本研究使用开发的问卷探讨了父母对屏幕时间对正常发育的学龄儿童语言技能的影响的看法。
192 名年龄在 6 至 10 岁之间的正常发育儿童的父母参与了这项研究。研究的第一阶段包括开发一个针对屏幕设备对语言发展影响的问卷。问卷被转换为在线调查，并在第二阶段分发给家长。对检索到的数据进行描述性统计，并用卡方检验来确定所有语言参数中使用屏幕设备之间的关联。
父母报告说电视和智能手机是最常用的设备类型，很大一部分儿童每天使用屏幕设备 1-2 小时。大多数父母报告说，孩子主要是出于娱乐目的观看屏幕，偶尔在监督下观看，而不是依赖屏幕作为潜在的奖励。屏幕设备对语言技能的影响已经在语义、句法和语用方面进行了讨论。
本研究的结果将有助于确定儿童使用屏幕设备的现有趋势，从而确定导致语言延迟的潜在因素。这些信息还将有助于在有语言延迟的儿童的干预计划中进行父母咨询。
