In 2 studies, the authors explored preadolescent and adolescent use of personal homepages in relation to mastery and identity formation. In Study 1, the authors attempted to determine the prevalence of personal homepage and online journal (blog) construction among a random sample (N=500) of preadolescents and adolescents. Adolescents were more likely to create personal homepages or blogs than preadolescents. Creation was related to feelings of mastery, expressions of identity, and a means to socialize. In Study 2, the authors explored the relationship of homepages to mastery and identity formation by content analysis of a random sample of homepages. Results suggest children use personal homepages to express and explore their forming identities.

There is little evidence that infants learn from infant-oriented educational videos and television programming. This four week longitudinal experiment investigated 15-month-olds’ (N=92) ability to learn ASL signs (e.g., patting head for hat) from at-home viewing of instructional video, either with or without parent support, compared to traditional parent instruction and a no-exposure control condition. Forced choice, elicited production, and parent report measures indicate learning across all three exposure conditions, with a trend towards more robust learning in the parent support conditions, regardless of medium. There were no differences between experimental and control conditions in the acquisition of corresponding verbal labels. This constitutes the first experimental evidence of infants’ ability to learn expressive communication from commercially available educational videos.

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