Development article: Assessing multiple object tracking in young children using a game
Ryokai, K., Farzin, F., Kaltman, E. & Niemeyer, G.
Education Technology Research Development (2013) 61:153-170
DOI 10.1007/s11423-012-9278-x
Link to article: people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~kimiko/papers/ETRD2012.Ryokai.TrackFX.pdf
Multiple object tracking (MOT) - identifying, visually tracking and maintaining continued attention to multiple moving objects, is both a complex and a critical life skill. Object tracking skills increase between childhood and young adulthood.
Objective: There is little understanding of the emergence of MOT in young children. The authors create an MOT assessment task that engages children from 30 months of age, uses touch or tangible interface, and has scientific validity. They pose the questions:“Can young children under the age of five interact with digital objects on a touch-tablet to accomplish a visual-motor task such as MOT?” and “Would young children’s tracking ability improve over time with more game play?”. Transferability “do computer games transfer to the real world”, effective game design and choice of the tablet as a touch or tangible user interface arise as issues in this MOT assessment’s creation.
Findings: 31 children between 30 and 58 months each played an average of six sessions. This group could track an average of three objects or one object with two distracters. The threshold of successful game play did not vary within this age group. Within sessions, children’s play did not differ from adults when the game presented three or less objects (without distracters), but differed significantly as four or more objects were presented, or when distracting objects were present. Across sessions, the study did not demonstrate a learning effect (possibly due to a large number of subjects who played only two sessions) and an overall decline in performance after six sessions, (possibly due to distracted attention).