Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Creators and consumers of popular media for kids tend to equate children's sustained attention with learning (Gahan, 2022; Segal, 2022). Here, we demonstrate that greater sustained visual attention does not necessarily translate to better learning—and in fact may predict learning deficits in some cases. We present the results of an empirical eye tracking study in which we demonstrate that attentionally captivating material can lead to worse learning with greater attentional capture, likely due to either distraction or overstimulation. Children who engaged most during a word-learning task learned the fewest word-object associations when they were presented on a colorful, moving background. These results support theories that suggest attentional capture due to perceptual attractors (e.g., things that are ”bright, shiny”) can disrupt learning. This work underscores the importance of the quality of screen-based media when considering the potential harms of children's screen time