CDMC | Children's Digital Media Center

Welcome to CDMC

Welcome to the Children's Digital Media Center. We are a consortium of scholars located at Georgetown University, University of Massachussetts- Amherst, University of California- Riverside, the Research Triangle Institute International, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University. We are dedicated to understanding how digital media influence children's development.

Primarily through funds from the National Science Foundation, we conduct research, train researchers, and disseminate information to policymakers and businesses about children and digital media in order to create a quality children's media environment. Some of our current projects are described below. Please feel free to explore this website to see even more of the work going on at the Children’s Digital Media Center and join us in making this vision a reality. If you are a parent interested in participating in future studies at the CDMC, please click the “Join Us” link on the menu bar at the top of this page and fill out the contact information form found there.

Sandra Calvert, Professor of Psychology
Director, Children's Digital Media Center

Children's Use and Understanding of iPads

When choosing whether or not to believe external sources of information, children are influenced in large part by their familiarity with the source. Research has shown that children judge a familiar teacher that presents incorrect information as more credible and trustworthy than an unfamiliar teacher who presents the same incorrect information. However, less is known about the influence of familiarity on children’s judgments about the credibility of media characters.

Because media characters may serve as potentially credible sources of information, researchers at the CDMC are experimentally investigating how familiarity influences the trustworthiness of media characters among children by having children play a fruit-naming game on an iPad. In this game, a familiar character (Elmo) and an unfamiliar character (DoDo, a children’s character popular in Taiwan) present and label fruit. In one condition, children are exposed to the familiar character naming the fruits correctly and the unfamiliar character incorrectly naming the fruits. In a second condition, children are exposed to the familiar character naming the fruits incorrectly and the unfamiliar character correctly naming the fruits. Following this trial, foreign fruits like star fruit and dragon fruit are presented in the app and the characters use fantasy labels to name the fruits. Researchers at the CDMC are then examining if the familiarity with the character influences who the child thinks is naming the fruit correctly.

This project investigates source credibility using the touch screen technology of the iPad. The CDMC team has created the fruit-naming iPad app specifically for use in this study, allowing researchers to investigate the role that familiarity plays in children’s judgments made about information presented to them on the iPad. In addition to learning about trust, our goal is to also investigate how children interact with and use touch screen technology.

Children's Parasocial Relationships

Over 50 years ago, scholars began to study the way that individuals develop social relationships with others whom they only know through the media, specifically television. The term parasocial relationship was coined to describe the one-sided relationship that often exists between a television viewer and television characters. Much of the research on parasocial relationships has examined adults’ relationships with news anchors, soap opera stars, and celebrities. Less is known about children’s parasocial relationships.

Given recently published research coming out of the CDMC that shows children may learn better from socially meaningful characters than from characters who are less meaningful, the development of a parasocial relationship with a media character could have great implications on children’s ability to learn from media characters.

Dr. Calvert and her team at the CDMC have undertaken a line of studies to examine children’s development of parasocial relationships, issues in measuring parasocial relationships, and the ability of children to learn from characters with whom they have developed parasocial relationships.

Click here for more information about each of the studies currently being conducted to further our understanding of children’s parasocial relationships.

Upcoming Presentations

Richards, M. & Calvert, S.L. (2012, May). Toddler playtime behaviors predict STEM skill learning from a meaningful media character. Poster presented at the American Psychological Society, Chicago, IL.

Calvert, S.L. (2012, June). Educational Media. Professor Calvert will present a series of invited presentations about children’s educational media for the US State Department in Macedonia.

In The News

Toddlers Learn Early Math Skill from Elmo

Dr. Calvert recently appeared on MSNBC to discuss research that she conducted with Alexis R. Lauricella and Alice Ann Howard Gola at the CDMC that examined toddlers’ ability to learn from Elmo. The study, published in Media Psychology, revealed that toddlers performed a sequencing task better when an Elmo puppet demonstrated it than when an unfamiliar puppet performed the same exact task. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and a Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship, demonstrated the importance of meaningful characters for toddlers' early learning.

"Very young children often have difficulty learning from videos," said Calvert of the study. "But when a trusted 'friend' delivers the message, learning is much better. The findings have important implications for young children's mastery of important mathematical skills in a 21st century learning environment."

See Dr. Calvert’s interview with MSNBC here:

Kids2College Students Learn About Media Literacy

Bradley Bond, post-doctoral research fellow, and Melissa Richards, graduate student, spent an afternoon with prospective participants in the Kids2College program on Georgetown’s campus this spring. Bond and Richards gave a presentation about the role of media in the lives of American youth as part of the Kids2College open house for middle school students from Washington D.C.’s 7th Ward. The pair from the CDMC informed the preteens both about media literacy and about the different ways that undergraduate students can get involved in the kind of research conducted at the CDMC.

More information can be found here.

Rethinking the Children's Television Act

In June 2009, Professor Calvert testified to the Senate Commitee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding recommendations to update the Children's Television Act for the digital media age. Dr. Calvert encouraged the formation of a public-private partnership to bring together broadcasters, policymakers, and academics to improve the educational quality of children's programming.