Children's Attentional Involvement and Distractibility during Educational Computer Interactions

Abstract

Children's duration of attention to computer programs versus a television program was examined for two grades: kindergarten and third. Twenty-four children, equally distributed by grade and gender, participated individually in a twenty-seven minute session where they could interact with six familiar computer packages. A television program was played as a distractor task. Both age groups attended longer to the computer than to the television program. However, older children attended to the computer more than did the younger children who, in turn, were more distracted by the television program. There were no gender differences in attentional patterns. The results suggest that educational computer software provides an attractive alternative to television viewing and that attentional patterns to computer programs both increase and are more resistant to distraction with development.