How Does the Use of Modern Communication Technology Influence Language and Literacy Development? A Review
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paper_title: Technology in the Home and the Achievement of Young Children: Findings from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

paper_content:

Because technology in the home is becoming ever more available, understanding the role of technology in early childhood development is increasingly an opportunity and a concern for educators. This report examines data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99, to provide an overview of the role of technology in the home and its impact on reading and math achievement in the early grades. The results show that access and use of technology influence children's academic achievement. Although the results show that having access to technology can contribute significantly to the achievement of young children, mere access is unlikely to be sufficient for all young children to benefit from technology in the home. Adults will need to mediate the use of these potential learning tools for children. Based on the findings of this report, policymakers should support increasing the availability of computers for low-income families and continue to discourage extensive viewing of TV, and re...
---
paper_title: Children ’ s use of the internet : reflections on the emerging research agenda

paper_content:

As domestic access to the internet reaches the mass market in industrialized countries, this article identifies and evaluates the emerging research agenda, focusing particularly on children and young people. The nature of children's internet use generates public anxieties which both guide and undermine research, complicating the already challenging study of children within the privacy of the home. The body of empirical work reviewed is still small, but already key questions of academic and policy significance are being addressed regarding the opportunities and dangers of internet use. Such opportunities include communication, identity and participation, and education, learning and literacy; dangers arising from exclusion and the digital divide, and from certain kinds of use relating to inappropriate or undesirable contact, content and commercialism. In each of these domains, research strengths and gaps for future research are identified. The article concludes by noting areas of theoretical consensus and u...
---
paper_title: Internet Use and Cognitive Development: A Theoretical Framework

paper_content:

The number of children and adolescents accessing the Internet as well as the amount of time online are steadily increasing. The most common online activities include playing video games, accessing web sites, and communicating via chat rooms, email, and instant messaging. A theoretical framework for understanding the effects of Internet use on cognitive development is presented. The proposed framework, based on the cognitive information processing model, the sociocultural perspective, the PASS cognitive processing model, and the neurological orientation, organises previous research in terms of the cognitive consequences of common online activities. From a cognitive-developmental perspective, the Internet is a cultural tool that influences cognitive processes and an environmental stimulus that contributes to the formation of specific cognitive architecture.
---
paper_title: Taking Up Online Opportunities? Children's Uses of the Internet for Education, Communication and Participation

paper_content:

The research project, UK Children Go Online (UKCGO), is conducting a rigorous investigation of 9-19 year olds’ use of the internet, comparing girls and boys of different ages, backgrounds etc., in order to ask how the internet may be transforming, or may itself be shaped by family life, peer networks and school. It combines qualitative interviews and observations with a major national survey of 9-19 year olds (N=1511) and their parents (N=906). This paper focuses on two of the key opportunities the internet affords to children and young people: first, education, informal learning and literacy and, second, communication and participation. The survey charts how central the internet has become in young people’s and children’s lives as an information medium to support school work, although it is not seen as a wholly unproblematic learning tool. Children and young people alike encounter difficulties with searching the web, with the critical evaluation of website contents, and with a range of other online skills, and these in turn appear due to the patchy educational support they have received in internet literacy teaching. While education and learning represent the ‘approved’ uses of the internet, which is often the reason for which parents and governments invest in domestic internet access, children and young people themselves are far more excited by the internet as a communication medium. Both internet (instant message, email, chat) and mobile phone (talk, text) are mostly used to contact friends that live locally and, through skilful choices regarding the nature of these technologies in relation to the purposes of the communication, they are employed to manage the intimacy, embarrassment or privacy demands of such communications. Hence for many, mediated communication is by no means seen as less satisfactory than face-to-face communication. Although such communication sustains the peer network, it does not necessarily generate a wider interest in community or civic participation, although over half have shown some interest in such web content. However, not all the opportunities available to children and young people are being taken up equally. Hence the paper concludes by charting the emergence of a new divide, signalling emerging inequalities in the quality of internet use, with children and young people being divided into those for whom the internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance in their lives and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance.
---
paper_title: Buried Treasure: The Impact of Computer Use on Young Children's Social, Cognitive, Language Development and Motivation

paper_content:

Increasingly, young children are being exposed to computers at home and at school despite disagreement regarding the appropriateness and potential impact of technology on young children’s development. Many views that predominant the debates lack empirical support and are too broad in their scope. This study examines the existing empirical studies from 1985-2004 on the impact of computer use on preschooler’s social, cognitive, language development, and motivation. Findings are discussed within the framework of social and cognitive theories by Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky.
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paper_title: The role of language, social cognition, and social skill in the functional social outcomes of young adolescents with and without a history of SLI

paper_content:

Social skill and language are known to relate, not least in the example of those with specific language impairment (SLI). However, most of the research examining this trend has been conducted on young primary school age children and the nature of the relationships is unclear. Furthermore, little is known about which young people in general have social difficulties and whether language, social cognition, and social skills are directly associated at this age. In this study, a large cohort made up of young people with a history of SLI (N = 134) and a typically developing (TD) group (N = 124) of the same age were followed up in their final year of compulsory schooling (aged 16). Language, social cognition, social skills, and functional social outcomes (friendships and levels of social activity) were assessed using tasks and questionnaires. Modest associations were found between social cognition, language, and social behaviours, the strongest being between language and social cognition. Regression analyses showed that as a combined group, the adolescents' functional social outcomes were most associated with expressive language, social skill, and social cognitive ability. However, the patterns differed when the groups were analysed separately, with social cognition playing more of a role for those with SLI. These findings suggest that poor language may play a complex role in adolescents' social development.
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paper_title: The relative learning benefits of synchronous and asynchronous text‐based discussion

paper_content:

The article examines the two distinct modes of text-based discussion in computer-mediated communication: synchronous (real time) and asynchronous (delayed time). How these two forms impact student cognitive and affective outcomes in a learning environment is considered. The substance of the research concerns an educational psychology course where both synchronous web chat-style discussion and asynchronous web post-style discussion was used. The results of a student survey show that the type of discussion used did not have a demonstrable effect on student test performance.
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paper_title: Language and the internet

paper_content:

Preface 1. A linguistic perspective 2. The medium of Netspeak 3. Finding an identity 4. The language of e-mail 5. The language of chatgroups 6. The language of virtual worlds 7. The language of the Web 8. The future of the Internet Index.
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paper_title: Uncommon Understanding: Development and Disorders of Language Comprehension in Children

paper_content:

Preface to the Classic Edition. Foreword. 1. From Sound to Meaning: A Framework for Analysing Comprehension. 2. Specific Language Impairment. 3. Speech Perception. 4. Understanding Word Meaning. 5. Grammatical Knowledge in Sentence Comprehension. 6. Understanding Sentences in Real Time. 7. Understanding Discourse: Integrating Language and Context. 8. Understanding Intended Meaning: Social Aspects of Comprehension. 9. Modularity and Interaction in Language Development and Disorders.
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paper_title: Beyond formalities: The case of language acquisition

paper_content:

Generative grammar retained from American structural linguistics the 'formal' approach, which basically effaces the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of grammar. This creates serious problems for an account of language acquisition, most especially the problem of how to link universal grammar to some particular language (the linking problem). Parameters do not help the situation, as they depend on a prior linking of the lexical and functional categories of a language to universal grammar. In contrast, usage-based accounts of language acquisition do not posit an innate universal grammar and so have no linking problem. And if children's cognitive and social skills are conceptualized in the right way, there is no poverty of the stimulus in this approach either. In general, the only fully adequate accounts of language acquisition are those that give a prominent role to children's comprehension of communicative function in everything from words to grammatical morphemes to complex syntactic constructions.
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paper_title: Nonliteral language forms in children : In what order are they acquired in pragmatics and metapragmatics?

paper_content:

Abstract The purpose of this study was to gain insight into nonliteral language acquisition by children. Two dimensions were introduced: the acquisition order of the different forms of nonliteral language from the standpoint of comprehension and metapragmatic knowledge, and the relationship between their understanding and metapragmatic knowledge about them. Three nonliteral forms – indirect requests (hints), idioms, and conversational implicatures – were studied in children divided into three age groups (6, 8, and 10 years) using a cross-sectional approach: each child was tested on all three nonliteral forms. Data was collected from a story completion task presented as a computer game (the child chose one of two pictures and explained why). The results indicated that nonliteral language comprehension (pragmatic skills) and metapragmatic knowledge are acquired in different orders. For comprehension, the order was: semantic-inference implicatures, indirect requests, idioms, sarcastic-inference implicatures. For metapragmatic knowledge, the order was: idioms, implicatures with a sarcastic or semantic inference, indirect requests. The discussion compares the results to available data on each of these forms, and proposes some future perspectives, both for the study of everyday language learning and for more theoretical questions. The analysis of the relationship between pragmatics and metapragmatics during language acquisition is also addressed.
---
paper_title: Technology in the Home and the Achievement of Young Children: Findings from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

paper_content:

Because technology in the home is becoming ever more available, understanding the role of technology in early childhood development is increasingly an opportunity and a concern for educators. This report examines data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99, to provide an overview of the role of technology in the home and its impact on reading and math achievement in the early grades. The results show that access and use of technology influence children's academic achievement. Although the results show that having access to technology can contribute significantly to the achievement of young children, mere access is unlikely to be sufficient for all young children to benefit from technology in the home. Adults will need to mediate the use of these potential learning tools for children. Based on the findings of this report, policymakers should support increasing the availability of computers for low-income families and continue to discourage extensive viewing of TV, and re...
---
paper_title: Exploring the relationship between children's knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes

paper_content:

This paper presents a study of 88 British 10–12-year-old children's knowledge of text message (SMS) abbreviations (‘textisms’) and how it relates to their school literacy attainment. As a measure of textism knowledge, the children were asked to compose text messages they might write if they were in each of a set of scenarios. Their text messages were coded for types of text abbreviations (textisms) used, and the ratio of textisms to total words was calculated to indicate density of textism use. The children also completed a short questionnaire about their mobile phone use. The ratio of textisms to total words used was positively associated with word reading, vocabulary, and phonological awareness measures. Moreover, the children's textism use predicted word reading ability after controlling for individual differences in age, short-term memory, vocabulary, phonological awareness and how long they had owned a mobile phone. The nature of the contribution that textism knowledge makes to children's word reading attainment is discussed in terms of the notion of increased exposure to print, and Crystal's (2006a) notion of ludic language use.
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paper_title: Born digital: understanding the first generation of digital natives

paper_content:

The first generation of digital natives children who were born into and raised in the digital world are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our cultural life, even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed.But who are these digital natives? How are they different from older generations or digital immigrants and what is the world theyre creating going to look like? In Born Digital, leading internet and technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer a sociological portrait of this exotic tribe of young people who can seem, even to those merely a generation older, both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow.Based on original research, Born Digital explores a broad range of issues, from the highly philosophical to the purely practical: What does identity mean for young people who have dozens of online profiles and avatars? Should we worry about privacy issues or is privacy even a relevant concern for digital natives? How does the concept of safety translate into an increasingly virtual world? Is stranger-danger a real problem, or a red herring? What lies ahead socially, professionally, and psychologically for this generation?A smart, practical guide to a brave new world and its complex inhabitants, Born Digital will be essential reading for parents, teachers, and the myriad of confused adults who want to understand the digital present and shape the digital future.
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paper_title: Functional Internet Literacy: required cognitive skills with implications for instruction

paper_content:

Patterns of typical Internet use provide the basis for defining functional Internet literacy. Internet use commonly includes communication, information, recreation, and commercial activities. Technical competence with connectivity, security, and downloads is a prerequisite for using the Internet for such activities. Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive skills consists of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Such a hierarchy provides a structure by which to organize the intellectual requirements for effective online communication, information, recreation, and commercial activities, and the technical skills necessary to operate the equipment that mediates Internet use. Functional Internet literacy, conceptualized as a range of cognitive skills applied to common online activities, is best achieved in formal learning environments. The assessment of cognitive skill deficits associated with specific online activities targets instruction. Functional Internet literacy is not the ability to use a set of technical tools; rather, it is the ability to use a set of cognitive tools.
---
paper_title: Internet Use and Cognitive Development: A Theoretical Framework

paper_content:

The number of children and adolescents accessing the Internet as well as the amount of time online are steadily increasing. The most common online activities include playing video games, accessing web sites, and communicating via chat rooms, email, and instant messaging. A theoretical framework for understanding the effects of Internet use on cognitive development is presented. The proposed framework, based on the cognitive information processing model, the sociocultural perspective, the PASS cognitive processing model, and the neurological orientation, organises previous research in terms of the cognitive consequences of common online activities. From a cognitive-developmental perspective, the Internet is a cultural tool that influences cognitive processes and an environmental stimulus that contributes to the formation of specific cognitive architecture.
---
paper_title: Uncommon Understanding: Development and Disorders of Language Comprehension in Children

paper_content:

Preface to the Classic Edition. Foreword. 1. From Sound to Meaning: A Framework for Analysing Comprehension. 2. Specific Language Impairment. 3. Speech Perception. 4. Understanding Word Meaning. 5. Grammatical Knowledge in Sentence Comprehension. 6. Understanding Sentences in Real Time. 7. Understanding Discourse: Integrating Language and Context. 8. Understanding Intended Meaning: Social Aspects of Comprehension. 9. Modularity and Interaction in Language Development and Disorders.
---
paper_title: The impact of computer use on children's and adolescents' development

paper_content:

In recent years, electronic games, home computers, and the Internet have assumed an important place in our lives. This paper presents a review of the research on the impact of home computer use on the development of children and adolescents. Time use data are presented along with a discussion of factors such as age, gender, and ethnicity, which impact the time spent on computers as well as the activities engaged in. Research on the impact of computer use on cognitive skill and academic development, social development and relationships, and perceptions of reality and violent behavior is reviewed. The special role of the Internet in the lives of adolescents is brought out using data from the HomeNet study. The paper concludes with recommendations for future study in order to better understand the growing impact of computers on our youth. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
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paper_title: Social context and communication channels choice among adolescents

paper_content:

As online communication is more and more integrated in everyday life to support and maintain existing social ties, this study examined the factors associated with preference of face to face, phone or online conversations. A contextual framework that emphasizes the role of relationship origin, relationship intensity and content of communication on communication channel choice among adolescents was empirically tested. Based on a nationwide survey in Israel, it was found that communication content, relationship origin and place of residence affect the preference of face to face and online communication. Phone communication appears to be a more non specific channel to conduct personal and non personal conversations and relationship origin did not affect its use. These findings suggest that relationship origin is important, and face to face communication is preferred for ties that were initiated face to face and online communication for ties that were initiated online. For this sample of regular population, there is no indication that online communication tends to be personal or hyper personal. The use of all the communication channels is preferred to the maintenance of existing ties and is less used for the creation of new ties.
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paper_title: Selective self-presentation in computer-mediated communication : Hyperpersonal dimensions of technology , language , and cognition

paper_content:

The hyperpersonal model of computer-mediated communication (CMC) posits that users exploit the technological aspects of CMC in order to enhance the messages they construct to manage impressions and facilitate desired relationships. This research examined how CMC users managed message composing time, editing behaviors, personal language, sentence complexity, and relational tone in their initial messages to different presumed targets, and the cognitive awareness related to these processes. Effects on several of these processes and outcomes were obtained in response to different targets, partially supporting the hyperpersonal perspective of CMC, with unanticipated gender and status interaction effects suggesting behavioral compensation through CMC, or overcompensation when addressing presumably undesirable partners.
---
paper_title: Buried Treasure: The Impact of Computer Use on Young Children's Social, Cognitive, Language Development and Motivation

paper_content:

Increasingly, young children are being exposed to computers at home and at school despite disagreement regarding the appropriateness and potential impact of technology on young children’s development. Many views that predominant the debates lack empirical support and are too broad in their scope. This study examines the existing empirical studies from 1985-2004 on the impact of computer use on preschooler’s social, cognitive, language development, and motivation. Findings are discussed within the framework of social and cognitive theories by Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky.
---
paper_title: Development and Evaluation of a Computer-Animated Tutor for Vocabulary and Language Learning in Children with Autism

paper_content:

Using our theoretical framework of multimodal processing, we developed and evaluated a computer-animated tutor, Baldi, to teach vocabulary and grammar for children with autism. Baldi was implemented in a Language Wizard/Player, which allows easy creation and presentation of a language lesson involving the association of pictures and spoken words. The lesson plan includes both the identification of pictures and the production of spoken words. In Experiment 1, eight children were given initial assessment tests, tutorials, and reassessment tests 30 days following mastery of the vocabulary items. All of the students learned a significant number of new words and grammar. A second within-subject design with six children followed a multiple baseline design and documented that the program was responsible for the learning and generalization of new words. The research indicates that children with autism are capable of learning new language within an automated program centered around a computer-animated agent, multimedia, and active participation and can transfer and use the language in a natural, untrained environment.
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paper_title: Gestures in conversation - the significance of gestures and utterances when children and preschool teachers create stories using the computer

paper_content:

Gestures are a significant part of communication and carry particular weight when using artefacts such as computers. This study investigates how gestures and utterances are used as resources in the interaction between children and preschool teachers when creating stories with the computer. The data consists of observations of 17 preschool teachers and 34 children who are engaged in making stories. The interaction between the child, the preschool teacher, and the computer has been documented on videotape and analysed by Interaction Analysis. The results show the preschool teachers' decisive significance as an interplay partner for the child's appropriation of a linguistic capacity outside of a here-and-now situation.
---
paper_title: Language and the internet

paper_content:

Preface 1. A linguistic perspective 2. The medium of Netspeak 3. Finding an identity 4. The language of e-mail 5. The language of chatgroups 6. The language of virtual worlds 7. The language of the Web 8. The future of the Internet Index.
---
paper_title: Children ’ s use of the internet : reflections on the emerging research agenda

paper_content:

As domestic access to the internet reaches the mass market in industrialized countries, this article identifies and evaluates the emerging research agenda, focusing particularly on children and young people. The nature of children's internet use generates public anxieties which both guide and undermine research, complicating the already challenging study of children within the privacy of the home. The body of empirical work reviewed is still small, but already key questions of academic and policy significance are being addressed regarding the opportunities and dangers of internet use. Such opportunities include communication, identity and participation, and education, learning and literacy; dangers arising from exclusion and the digital divide, and from certain kinds of use relating to inappropriate or undesirable contact, content and commercialism. In each of these domains, research strengths and gaps for future research are identified. The article concludes by noting areas of theoretical consensus and u...
---
paper_title: Internet Use and Cognitive Development: A Theoretical Framework

paper_content:

The number of children and adolescents accessing the Internet as well as the amount of time online are steadily increasing. The most common online activities include playing video games, accessing web sites, and communicating via chat rooms, email, and instant messaging. A theoretical framework for understanding the effects of Internet use on cognitive development is presented. The proposed framework, based on the cognitive information processing model, the sociocultural perspective, the PASS cognitive processing model, and the neurological orientation, organises previous research in terms of the cognitive consequences of common online activities. From a cognitive-developmental perspective, the Internet is a cultural tool that influences cognitive processes and an environmental stimulus that contributes to the formation of specific cognitive architecture.
---
paper_title: Literacy for Sustainable Development in the Age of Information. Language and Education Library 14.

paper_content:

Part I Theoretical frameworks: literacy - in search of paradigm. Part II Literacy and development issues: literacy and the nation-state literacy and social development mass literacy campaign - some lessons from the past. Part III Globalization - the implications of technological development, social and cultural change on concepts and definitions of literacy: technological change and cultural transformations changing definitions of "text" within the information society conceptualizing literacy, knowledge and power in the information society towards "communicative competence" for democratic participation in the information society.
---
paper_title: The impact of computer use on children's and adolescents' development

paper_content:

In recent years, electronic games, home computers, and the Internet have assumed an important place in our lives. This paper presents a review of the research on the impact of home computer use on the development of children and adolescents. Time use data are presented along with a discussion of factors such as age, gender, and ethnicity, which impact the time spent on computers as well as the activities engaged in. Research on the impact of computer use on cognitive skill and academic development, social development and relationships, and perceptions of reality and violent behavior is reviewed. The special role of the Internet in the lives of adolescents is brought out using data from the HomeNet study. The paper concludes with recommendations for future study in order to better understand the growing impact of computers on our youth. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
---
paper_title: Taking Up Online Opportunities? Children's Uses of the Internet for Education, Communication and Participation

paper_content:

The research project, UK Children Go Online (UKCGO), is conducting a rigorous investigation of 9-19 year olds’ use of the internet, comparing girls and boys of different ages, backgrounds etc., in order to ask how the internet may be transforming, or may itself be shaped by family life, peer networks and school. It combines qualitative interviews and observations with a major national survey of 9-19 year olds (N=1511) and their parents (N=906). This paper focuses on two of the key opportunities the internet affords to children and young people: first, education, informal learning and literacy and, second, communication and participation. The survey charts how central the internet has become in young people’s and children’s lives as an information medium to support school work, although it is not seen as a wholly unproblematic learning tool. Children and young people alike encounter difficulties with searching the web, with the critical evaluation of website contents, and with a range of other online skills, and these in turn appear due to the patchy educational support they have received in internet literacy teaching. While education and learning represent the ‘approved’ uses of the internet, which is often the reason for which parents and governments invest in domestic internet access, children and young people themselves are far more excited by the internet as a communication medium. Both internet (instant message, email, chat) and mobile phone (talk, text) are mostly used to contact friends that live locally and, through skilful choices regarding the nature of these technologies in relation to the purposes of the communication, they are employed to manage the intimacy, embarrassment or privacy demands of such communications. Hence for many, mediated communication is by no means seen as less satisfactory than face-to-face communication. Although such communication sustains the peer network, it does not necessarily generate a wider interest in community or civic participation, although over half have shown some interest in such web content. However, not all the opportunities available to children and young people are being taken up equally. Hence the paper concludes by charting the emergence of a new divide, signalling emerging inequalities in the quality of internet use, with children and young people being divided into those for whom the internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance in their lives and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance.
---

Title: How Does the Use of Modern Communication Technology Influence Language and Literacy Development? A Review

Section 1: Introduction
Description 1: Introduce the development and prevalence of modern communication technology and outline the topic.

Section 2: The Language of Modern Communication Technology
Description 2: Discuss the nature and characteristics of electronic discourse and its implications for language skills.

Section 3: Development of Children's Communication Skills
Description 3: Outline the normal course of language and literacy development in children.

Section 4: Environmental Influences
Description 4: Investigate how communication technology may impact language development and literacy skills, focusing on environmental factors.

Section 5: Impacts of Communication Technologies on Language and Literacy Skills
Description 5: Analyze research findings on the effects of communication technology on language skills and literacy development.

Section 6: Discussion and Conclusions
Description 6: Summarize the findings of the review, discuss implications for future research, and address the need for reassessing traditional concepts of language and literacy.