Mídias de Telas e Testes de Atenção: Uso e Desempenho em Crianças de Seis a Oito Anos

Abstract

Since birth children are living in environments that are saturated by the presence of screen media. The use of screen media by children begins early and takes up much of their time. This early and frequent use has brought up concerns with parents, educators, health professionals and researchers. Among these concerns, the highlighted question is how the use of screen media can affect children's attention. The formal features of these shows, such as flashes, rapid changes of scenario and fanciful content can overstimulate the brains still in development. In addition, time spent in front of screen media can be displaced from more developmentally appropriate activities, such as interactions with caregivers and games. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between the time spent with screen media and the performance in attention tests in children aged 6 to 8 years. 73 students from 3 private schools participated in the study. The parents responded to a questionnaire that produced an estimate of time spent on screen media by their children. These results were correlated with the performance of the children in two psychological tests of standardized and normalized attention for the Brazilian population: Five Digit Test (FDT) and Psychological Battery of Attention Evaluation. The results show that the use of screen media by children is precocious and pervasive, the mean age at which the first television usage occurred was 16.4 months and the mean time spent on the screen was 4.3 hours per day. The results did not show an association between screen media usage and the attentional performance of the studied children.