Call for Submissions – Special Issue on Living in a Digital Ecology

• Letter of intent submission deadline: July 31, 2024
• Potential contributors contacted: August 31, 2024
• Invited manuscript submission deadline: December 22, 2024

Guest editors

• Mila Vulchanova – Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Norwegian University of Science & Technology
• Nivedita Mani – University of Göttingen
• David Saldaña-Sage – University of Seville

Action editor

• Mikko Peltola – Tampere University

Background:

Over half (54%) of the global population—some 4.3 billion people—now own a smartphone, according to the GSMA’s annual State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report 2023 (SOMIC). According to the most recent American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates, tablet ownership in U.S. households with children was 22 percentage points higher than in households without children in 2021. While households with children (under 18 years old) had higher rates of computer ownership and internet subscription than those without children, one of the largest differences was for so-called tablets—wireless, notebook-sized computers with touch screens.

The fast advance of digital technology (DT) is changing the ways in which children interact with their environment and the affordances of their learning environment. While offering a clear advantage in providing ample sources and opportunities for learning, new digital devices can have adverse impacts on attention, memory and cognition, including the ways in which native languages are acquired. Moreover, the concept of DT is a fast-changing field, with the rapid growth of an ecosystem of pervasive and embodied interactive technologies, such as robot tutors and AI-powered mobile tools and cognitive models.

It can be expected that digital tools may radically reshape the way children interact with their caregivers and peers, but also provide new modes of interaction with digital agents, such as social robots, as well as communication via online channels, such as Zoom or Skype. In addition, digital technology may increase the already existing social gap in opportunities for learning and language development in socially disadvantaged groups of children. Understanding the consequences of this new reality and what advantages and disadvantages it holds for the developing mind is a major prerequisite for tailoring how digital technology is developed and what principles it should follow (Meyer et al., 2021).

Despite the rapid change in children’s ecology and the rapid advance of technology, research on the impact of digital technologies on children’s communication and language development is still scarce and highly fragmented with no unitary approach across disciplines. New technologies create environments that could alter how we process information, the degree to which we take risks, how we socialise and empathise with others and even, how we view our own identity. Parents experience that toddlers can handle digital tools with a level of sophistication that they can only envy.

We are immersed in a ‘digital ecology’ increasingly populated by devices that are both tools at our disposal and interactive agents with a degree of autonomy. While software development in the provision of interactive digital platforms is advancing at a fast and unprecedented rate, and schools are spontaneously adopting digital solutions for the acquisition of academic skills, such as literacy, at present, the research base documenting the effects of digital tools on language or other learning outcomes in young children is still scarce (Vulchanova et al., 2017; Meyer et al., 2021; Taylor et al., 2022).

Neither are current software solutions based on developmental, educational or psycholinguistic principles. On the one hand, it can be expected, that this digital ecology may provide new opportunities and ways of (1) enhancing existing learning environments and (2) devising technologies that can improve learning and adjust to the needs of a variety of groups. On the other hand, the new digital environment may hide undesirable consequences for early child development. Newly published research suggests an adverse impact of screen time on children’s cognitive development, but little is known about the ways in which digital environments are likely to reshape children’s learning outcomes, including language and communication.

Details

The current special section aims to elicit robust new empirical evidence approaching digital transformation from an interdisciplinary perspective and across countries, cultures, and languages. Specific topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• The impact of embodied digital technology (e.g., augmented reality) on how children acquire concrete and abstract concepts and their labels (words).
• Extent to which digital tools can support language learning in bilingual environments and for second language learning.
• Ways in which digital tools re-shape social interaction by virtue of their affordances (touch-screens; visual features of online interaction).
• How DTs impact language and communication in children with diverse, typical and atypical, developmental trajectories.
• The extent to which digital technology alters or encourages curiosity and motivation in learning.

We will focus on empirical studies, ideally following a longitudinal quantitative or qualitative design, with a focus on the age range 0 to 8 years of age.

The collection of published papers will engender discussions and advance new theoretical developments in many adjacent fields such as cognitive development, language learning, and education. It will inform technology developers of basic tenets and principles to be observed in the development of new technology targeting children.

The collection will also inform policy makers, educational experts, digital technology developers and the public at large of how DT can be developed and implemented in an optimal way to serve language development and language learning across populations of children and across cultures, languages, and educational systems.

Submission details

Authors who plan to submit a manuscript for the special issue are asked to submit a letter of intent by July 31, 2024, that includes:

• Tentative title
• Contact information for corresponding author
• Names and affiliations of authors
• Brief description of the study: 500 words or less structured as background, method/sample, and proposed analyses or results
• A brief explanation (two sentences) of the perceived fit between the submission and the themes described
• Brief description of the status of the project to ensure fit with the special issue timeline: i.e., data collection underway; data are already collected and in-hand; analysis underway; -200 words or less

The guest editors will review letters of intent to fit with the section and work to provide the broadest representation of high-quality papers. Letters of intent should be sent as Word documents to Mila Vulchanova, Nivedita Mani, David Saldaña, Mikko Peltola. In the accompanying email, please include in the subject line “Special Section on Living in a Digital Ecology”. Following a review of received letters, potential contributors will be contacted by August 31, 2024, to submit full manuscripts. Selected manuscripts will be due by December 22, 2024, via Developmental Psychology’s submission site and will be subjected to full peer review.

Questions concerning the substance of submissions should be directed to Mila Vulchanova, Nivedita Mani, David Saldaña, Mikko Peltola.