The Importance of Character
Here at CloudKid HQ, we believe that great characters are the foundation for awesome children’s projects. That’s why we’re so excited about the recent coverage on the research of our very own educational advisor, Alexis Lauricella. As Alexis’ study, “Toddlers Learning from Socially Meaningful Video Characters,” concludes, social relationships that children develop with a character impact their ability to learn from media. In the case of her study, toddlers who saw a sequencing task performed by the beloved Elmo were significantly more able to perform the task themselves than two control groups.
In addition, we recently read a study out of the University of California, Riverside on the importance of social relationships with media characters. The study, “Media as Social Partners: The Social Nature of Young Children’s Learning From Screen Media,” had equally telling results. Similar to Alexis’ work, this paper cites the social nature of learning from screen media, concluding that there is a direct correlation between a child’s relationship with on-screen characters and their comprehension of information presented.
Studies such as these help reinvigorate our passion for the fact that kids media begins and ends with character. Hope they do the same for you…