Designing children’s media: taxonomies as a scaffold for learning and attention

The goal of this study was to develop an educational video that emphasized taxonomic relationships as a means of supporting attention and learning for preschoolers. We used a design study method to iteratively design, develop, implement and evaluate a video. In each iteration we evaluated the success of the video based on children’s attention, as measured through eye-tracking, their recognition of target vocabulary words introduced in the video, and the relationship between attention and vocabulary recognition. In the first iteration we tested 56 children, who were assigned to view the taxonomic video or no video. Children who viewed the video had high levels of attention but were only marginally more likely to identify low-frequency vocabulary words. In the second iteration we altered the content of the video, and tested 88 students, who viewed the taxonomic video, no video, or a thematically-organized video. We found that children in the taxonomic group showed a similarly high level of attention as iteration one but were better able to identify low-frequency vocabulary words. Children’s attention to the video significantly predicted their recognition of vocabulary words. These results suggested that taxonomically-organized videos may have potential as a source of knowledge for young children.