DIGITAL SKILLS AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING: DIGITAL LEARNING AS A NEW INSIGHT OF ENHANCED LEARNING BY THE INNOVATIVE APPROACH JOINING TECHNOLOGY AND COGNITION

EDITED BY : Dina Di Giacomo, Pierpaolo Vittorini and Pilar Lacasa PUBLISHED IN : Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in ICT

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# DIGITAL SKILLS AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING: DIGITAL LEARNING AS A NEW INSIGHT OF ENHANCED LEARNING BY THE INNOVATIVE APPROACH JOINING TECHNOLOGY AND COGNITION

Topic Editors: Dina Di Giacomo, University of L'Aquila, Italy Pierpaolo Vittorini, University of L'Aquila, Italy Pilar Lacasa, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain

Recently, technology and aging have been key research areas in human cognition.

The Research Topic "Digital Skills and Life-long Learning: Digital Learning as a New Insight of Enhanced Learning by the Innovative Approach Joining Technology and Cognition" investigated technology's impact on cognitive and intellective processes, highlighting how intensively technology can change and/or enhance the cognitive functioning throughout one's lifespan.

The aim of this Research Topic was to provide an outlook through multidisciplinary research and development while addressing the dynamic intersection of cognition, mind, and technology. Our scope was 1) to favor the cognitive technology debate, 2) to overcome the dichotomies of technology and psychology, 3) to emphasize the advances in knowledge and well-being.

This Research Topic comprises review studies and original articles, focused on digital skills that enhance human potential. Transversal approaches and cross-sectorial analysis were encouraged, leading to investigation areas related to cognitive and mental processing—in educational, rehabilitation, clinical settings—across aging.

Articles of high relevance to the Research Topic were submitted on the subjects of a) research in human performance and human factors, b) new research and technologies addressing the needs of a growing populace, and c) cognitive aging and cognitive rehabilitation research.

Citation: Giacomo, D. D., Vittorini, P., Lacasa, P., eds. (2019). Digital Skills and Life-long Learning: Digital Learning as a New Insight of Enhanced Learning by the Innovative Approach Joining Technology and Cognition. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88945-753-3

# Table of Contents

# EDITORIAL

*04 Editorial: Digital Skills and Life-Long Learning: Digital Learning as a New Insight of Enhanced Learning by the Innovative Approach Joining Technology and Cognition* Dina Di Giacomo, Pierpaolo Vittorini and Pilar Lacasa

# 1. ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLES

David Rodriguez-Andres, Magdalena Mendez-Lopez, M.-Carmen Juan and Elena Perez-Hernandez

*37 Digital Inclusion in Older Adults: A Comparison Between Face-to-Face and Blended Digital Literacy Workshops*

Claudia I. Martínez-Alcalá, Alejandra Rosales-Lagarde, María de los Ángeles Alonso-Lavernia, José Á. Ramírez-Salvador, Brenda Jiménez-Rodríguez, Rosario M. Cepeda-Rebollar, José Sócrates López-Noguerola, María Leticia Bautista-Díaz and Raúl Azael Agis-Juárez

*54 Reading on Paper and Screen Among Senior Adults: Cognitive Map and Technophobia*

Jinghui Hou, Yijie Wu and Erin Harrell

*64 Development and Evaluation of a Cognitive Training Game for Older People: A Design-based Approach*

Ming-Hsin Lu, Weijane Lin and Hsiu-Ping Yueh

*79 Examining the Relationship Between Teachers' ICT Self-Efficacy for Educational Purposes, Collegial Collaboration, Lack of Facilitation and the Use of ICT in Teaching Practice* Ida K. R. Hatlevik and Ove E. Hatlevik

# 2. TECHNOLOGY REPORTS

*87 Unobtrusive Observation of Team Learning Attributes in Digital Learning* David C. Gibson

# 3. REVIEWS

*92 Brain Training in Children and Adolescents: Is It Scientifically Valid?* Teresa Rossignoli-Palomeque, Elena Perez-Hernandez and Javier González-Marqués

# Editorial: Digital Skills and Life-Long Learning: Digital Learning as a New Insight of Enhanced Learning by the Innovative Approach Joining Technology and Cognition

Dina Di Giacomo1 \*, Pierpaolo Vittorini 1 and Pilar Lacasa2

1 Department of Life, Health and Environment Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy, 2 Faculty of Humanities, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

Keywords: digital, lifelong learning, digital skill, technology, ICT

#### **Editorial on the Research Topic**

#### **Digital Skills and Life-Long Learning: Digital Learning as a New Insight of Enhanced Learning by the Innovative Approach Joining Technology and Cognition**

Digital skills represent enhanced learning abilities within which cognition and technology interact to model the knowledge processes in aging populations. Since they are digital natives, new generations are tech savvy, using improved learning capabilities. Adults and older generations do not possess native technological competence. However, they are learning digital skills to improve their lives and to age well in a digital world.

Digital and technological innovations are impacting the daily living of people influencing significantly the demographic changes. New kind of jobs, new way to manage the healthcare, education, and social contexts. In the "White Paper on the Future of Europe," the European Commission (2017) highlights that it "is likely that most children entering primary school today will end up working in new job types that do not yet exist" and that coping with this "will require a massive investment in skills and a major rethink of education and lifelong learning system."

The Research Topic aimed to elaborate the benefits of digital skills such as to overcoming the barriers of technology, investigating the human factor in digital life-long learning, advancing the cognitive technology debate, overcoming the dichotomies between technology and psychology, and emphasizing the improvements to human knowledge and wellness. The studies' focus was on investigating technology's impact on cognitive and intellectual processes by highlighting the intensity with which technology can change and/or enhance cognitive/behavioral functioning over a lifetime. Multidisciplinary research has been the favored scientific approach.

The Research Topic Issue is composed of original research, as well as a technical report and review. The original research addressed relevant digital inclusion themes and self-efficacy in ICT and teaching practices. The cognitive training game focused on the adult population to see the impact of digital technology on aging adults' cognition and behaviors.

Several researchers have provided evidence of the potential for technology to improve cognitive development and learning outcomes in children. Many studies have highlighted the efficacy of technology in an educational context to promote innovative learning and greater cognitive autonomy (Zimmerman and Tsikalas, 2005; Alvermann et al., 2006; Di Giacomo et al., 2016a,b). Using an evidence-based approach, Di Giacomo et al.'s study investigated digital learning as smart learning in children by examining the influence of digital experiences on children's

Edited and reviewed by:

Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, Netherlands

> \*Correspondence: Dina Di Giacomo<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Human-Media Interaction, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 15 November 2018 Accepted: 05 December 2018 Published: 19 December 2018

#### Citation:

Di Giacomo D, Vittorini P and Lacasa P (2018) Editorial: Digital Skills and Life-Long Learning: Digital Learning as a New Insight of Enhanced Learning by the Innovative Approach Joining Technology and Cognition. Front. Psychol. 9:2621. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02621

**4**

cognitive development. Chao and Yu's study investigated Internet access and cyberbullying behavior in adolescents, and Rodriguez-Andres et al. focused on how videogames influence children's navigation skills. All of the research listed showed the impact of technology on daily living of people highlighting the changing in lifelong learning.

Older adults' abilities to use digital solutions and tools is a crucial issue, because low adherence to digital living creates a barrier in daily living, which reduces quality of life, independence, autonomy, and mental health. Moreover, such tools could effectively enhance medical care for the elderly. However, the fear of technology is more prevalent among older generations who did not grow up with computers, complicated acronyms, or digital games.

While the benefits of learning about computers and applications are abundant, on the negative side, learning can be stressful for people due to cognitive as well as psychological factors. This affect is commonly identified as "computer anxiety" (Cambre and Cook, 1985; Desai and Richards, 1998; Thatcher

# REFERENCES

and Perrewe, 2002). Martínez-Alcalá et al.'s study aimed at the digital inclusion of older adults, whereas Hou et al. dealt with technophobia as barrier to digital living in adulthood, and Lu et al.'s study developed a cognitive training game for older people. The last original research from Hatlevik and Hatlevik's was dedicated to the impact of technology on adults and their teaching practices.

Gibson's technology report designed a new framework to unobtrusively observe and analyse knowledge and skills-inaction by continuously collecting data from individuals as they interacted with digital assets either alone or on problem-solving teams.

Finally, the review by Rossignoli-Palomeque et al. debated the scientific concept of brain training in children and youth, specifically its efficacy in populations with neurological diseases.

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

DD, PV and PL wrote the Editorial.

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2018 Di Giacomo, Vittorini and Lacasa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# Digital Learning As Enhanced Learning Processing? Cognitive Evidence for New insight of Smart Learning

#### Dina Di Giacomo1 \*, Jessica Ranieri1 and Pilar Lacasa2

1 Department of Life, Health and Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy, 2 Department of Psychology, Documentation and Audiovisual Communication, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain

Large use of technology improved quality of life across aging and favoring the development of digital skills. Digital skills can be considered an enhancing to human cognitive activities. New research trend is about the impact of the technology in the elaboration information processing of the children. We wanted to analyze the influence of technology in early age evaluating the impact on cognition. We investigated the performance of a sample composed of n. 191 children in school age distributed in two groups as users: high digital users and low digital users. We measured the verbal and visuoperceptual cognitive performance of children by n. 8 standardized psychological tests and ad hoc self-report questionnaire. Results have evidenced the influence of digital exposition on cognitive development: the cognitive performance is looked enhanced and better developed: high digital users performed better in naming, semantic, visual memory and logical reasoning tasks. Our finding confirms the data present in literature and suggests the strong impact of the technology using not only in the social, educational and quality of life of the people, but also it outlines the functionality and the effect of the digital exposition in early age; increased cognitive abilities of the children tailor digital skilled generation with enhanced cognitive processing toward to smart learning.

#### Edited by:

Ana Lucia Pereira, Ponta Grossa State University, Brazil

#### Reviewed by:

Gianluca Castelnuovo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy Yuejin Xu, Murray State University, United States

> \*Correspondence: Dina Di Giacomo<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Educational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 11 April 2017 Accepted: 19 July 2017 Published: 03 August 2017

#### Citation:

Di Giacomo D, Ranieri J and Lacasa P (2017) Digital Learning As Enhanced Learning Processing? Cognitive Evidence for New insight of Smart Learning. Front. Psychol. 8:1329. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01329 Keywords: digital skills, cognitive process, childhood, technology, enhancing of cognitive processing

# INTRODUCTION

The influence of technology on people life is almost evident. The impact of technology is on the quality of life and wellness such as better living in social context, improved efficiency in working context and enhanced educational system. Lately, technology have had large and quick spread out making better: (a) the management of the working performance reducing elaboration processing data and providing fast processing of tasks, (b) the healthcare efficacy by application of the technology in the screening, diagnosis and treatment of the patients, (c) the educational proficiency enhancing the learning processing in lifespan in order to favor equality and wellness in daily living. Childhood, adulthood, and old age have taken advantage by technology through national and international scientific synergies and investments, providing innovative solutions for people's needs (Tikhomirov, 1974; Gamberini et al., 2006; Githens, 2007; Blaschke et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2010).

'Digital native' or 'Net generation' are ones of most used labels applied to the young people defining the generation of 'tech-savvy' learners (Tapscott, 1998; Prensky, 2001). Cognitive, social and emotional development processing results influenced by technology; as well as the related educational practice seems reflecting a changing in the daily living.

Interesting research topic is the influence of young children's use of technology on the learning system of young generation. Initially, researchers were rather cautious and they have been oriented to highlight the technology as impediment for mental development. In short time, the research addressed opposite view. Armstrong and Casement (2000) pointed out the technology should be avoided in order to don't keep out of the reach of children from interaction with others and so do not influence negatively the social and emotional development. Following review studies have evidenced that the concept about the technology as impediment in mental development as to be a myth to debunk (Yelland, 2011; Plowman and McPake, 2013): the awarded use of technology should be considered a valid instrument to improve the growth of children and doesn't represent an impediment for mental development.

Particular lively debate is about the technological impact on the educational system promoting new kind of learners. In fact, the radical occurred changing in education is strictly joined to the rapid technological development providing an impressive gap between the traditional teaching method and the needs of young people (Bennett and Maton, 2010). Moreover, Hsin et al. (2014) have highlighted the presence of fundamental gap between the technologically skilled and technological unskilled individuals, and the influent factors can be: economical status, cultural and social context, parents education. Kerawalla and Crook (2002) has pointed out as the home access to the technology can be strongly measure of the technological advantage: costs of devices affect the exposition to the digital tools and so having a low effect on the development of digital skill. Location of computer, rules about access and value placed on technology are three main determinant factors in the home access to the device that can mark the difference among young generation (Facer and Furlong, 2001; Campbell et al., 2006): timing, exposition time, availability of experienced digital tools can be somehow the measures of technological skill development. Besides, Furlong et al. (2000) suggested that the availability of computer doesn't mean genuine access. Parental control and much more parental supervising and supporting are getting became the focal key point in the early stage of digital skills.

The suggestion of these studies addressed that the new generations grow living inhomogeneous exposition to the technology (in terms of access to the device and digital tools use) and that draw different opportunities so then different technology experience that makes the difference the development of digital skills. Bennett and Maton (2010) sustained that the young people are pushed to the diversity of interests, motivations and needs. The simple exposition to the technology doesn't mean to be digital (or native) skilled. The complexity of young people as technological skilled has to be undertaken better and it is getting became the emerging research agenda. Specific focus has to be reserved to the impact of the technology on the intellective development in lifelong learning: as daily evident, the digital skills represent the enhancing of learning processing but those are detected by qualitative data (see review Hsin et al., 2014): it misses quantitative elaboration data about the use of technology influence starting in young age and then in lifelong going.

Verenikina et al. (2003) have evidenced the understanding of the digital exposition like new research trend in order to contribute to analyze the influence of its on cognitive and mental development in childhood. The utility and effectiveness of the technologies in childhood are largely spread out, but literature is focused rather on external variables as measurement of their influence: for instance scholastic successful and/or gaming ability. However, even though the scholastic successful could be a good measure, it doesn't explain if digital capabilities have effect on intellective improvement of children. In other hand, gaming and pedagogical supports are two relevant areas of Information Technology System and users. Measures about the influence of the exposition to technology in early age can define better the impact of its on intellective development in order to better understand and manage its application into educational system. According to Griffiths (2002), the gaming gets educational benefits not only in terms of entertainment value but also in the increasing of skills. Indeed, Author showed the efficacy of the technology in the development of skills among special need groups: e.g., brain-wave biofeedback on children with attention deficit disorders, or in general in rehabilitation in which several case reports to stimulate the motivation; enlarge the investigation from vulnerable to more largely population could favor the better use of technology based on awareness of its usefully in the enhanced growth of youth. In particular, Cecilia et al. (2015) have analyzed the influence of gaming activities on cognitive performance. The results showed the technological exposition in childhood can favor a better cognitive flexibility and enhanced learning; the autonomy in the use of the technological tools and/or applications represents a good practice to improve the learning abilities in developmental age.

Hsin et al. (2014) have analyzed a review about the influence of technology on learning processes of young children. The interaction children-technology is driven by different modality; the children characteristics are distinguished in age, experience, time and gender; the characteristics of technologies are located in mechanism design, teaching and learning approaches applied and content of technology. This complex interaction is moderated by third factor: adult influence articulated in facilitating children's engagement in technology, adapting teaching to integrate technology, perceptions of technology, adults' interaction maximizes the effect of technology. Hsin et al. (2014) proposed a conceptualizing young children's learning with technology highlighting the factors related to the learning outcomes. In this regard, interesting is the topic about the digital impact in weak leaning processing during childhood. Even if increasing slowly, few studies have been conducted so far. Cofini et al. (2012) have conducted a study about the effectiveness of digital support in poor comprehender children. Starting from innovative approach, experimental digital tool based on Adaptive Learning System (ALS), Authors provided a digital tool in order to support the cognitive weakness of children in reading tasks.

Findings showed positive impact on reading performance of poor comprehenders evidencing an added value of technology in learning processing.

In addition, Di Giacomo et al. (2015) have highlighted an increasing performance in the lower reading children applying a smarty digital tool. The results suggested the efficacy and the positive influence of technologies in the cognitive process: in the silent reading, the child may be better stimulated to learn and to comprehend the information using technology interactive. The adaptive learning technology might be considered a strong ally in mental development.

Albeit progressively, scientific community is focusing more deeply on 'how much' and 'what about' the technology can influence the intellective growth of children. Some studies have been conducted analyzing the impact of the technology in childhood evaluating the school performance (scholar successful data), others are have examined the gaming performance (Di Giacomo et al., 2016; Gomez et al., 2016; Monjelat et al., 2016). These investigations are focused on the performing data on specific digital tasks by processing the behavioral data. Being explored yet is the impact of digital stimulation on cognitive performance in mental development: particularly, evaluating the cognitive performance would mean to measure the digital impact on intellective development, and might be more suitable to argument about new insight of smart learning, no more in the view of digital and cognition distinguished.

Aim of present study was to investigate the influence of digital experience on cognitive development in childhood by evidence-based approach; our objective was to detect if the access to digital gaming in early childhood could determine a changing into mental development. We wanted to measure the effect of technology influence on childhood by assessment of cognitive performance using standardized psychological tests. Our research wants to detect preliminary data in order to understand if the digital experience in early age (or later) impacts the cognition.

# MATERIALS AND METHODS

# Subjects

The sample was composed of n. 191 native Italian speaker children (n. 82 females; n. 109 males), in range age 7–10 (mean age 8.7 ± 1.1).

The recruitment has been in a public primary Italian school and was mandatory the signed Informed Consensus by parents to process the inclusion of the children.

The inclusion criteria to take part of the sample have been: (a) range age 7–10 years olds, (b) no sign of psychological weakness and/or behavioral deficits, (c) signed Informed consent, (d) filled in of Self-report Questionnaire by parents. The exclusion criteria have been: (a) the presence of neurological and/or psychiatric signs; (b) no signed Informed consent, (c) ambiguity or refusal to fill in the Self-report Questionnaire by parents.

In **Table 1** are reported the details of demographic data of sample.

# Test

To test the cognitive performance of children we applied a Psychological measurement (psychological test composed of n. 8 standardized cognitive tests) and the Self-report Questionnaire was carried out ad hoc to detect the technology use from children.

## Psychological Measurement

The psychological measurement was conducted applying the psychological battery composed of eight standardized cognitive tests divided in two functional testing: visuospatial and verbal task. Visuospatial tasks are: Tower of London, Attentional Matrices, Corsi Blocking Tapping Test, Raven Progressive Matrices. Verbal tasks are: Fluency, Phonological Fluency, Syntactic Comprehension, Naming.

The psychological battery is composed of standardized tests and in the scoring was applied the standard foreseen procedures.

## Self-Report Questionnaire

A Self-report Questionnaire was carried out to detect information about the intensity of daily use of digital/board games of the sample. The examined variables have been: (a) the using of digital

#### TABLE 1 | Demographic data of the sample.

fpsyg-08-01329 July 31, 2017 Time: 15:4 # 4

games (PC/laptop, Ipad, Wii/Xbox, PSP, Smartphone, others); (b) the daily time in the using of digital games (half hour, 1 hour, 2–3 hour, more than 3 hours); (c) the using of board games (Monopoli, Risiko, Chess, Lady's play, Domino, Scarabeo, Goose game, Puzzle, Card's play, Other); (d) the daily time in the using of board games (half hour, 1 hour, 2–3 hour, more than 3 hours). In **Table 2** was reported the core of Self-report Questionnarie. The scoring of intensity of use of digital and/or boards games was based on four-Likert-point scale (Item 2 and Item 4 of the questionnaire). The other questions applied a qualitative scoring.

Applying questionnaire, we could classify the sample into two groups: (a) High Digital group (HD) = children that spend most high time for digital games; (b) Low Digital group (LD) = children that have spend most high time for board games.

# Ethics Statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations and approval of 'Consiglio Didattico' of the involved Schools with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

# Procedure

Testing was conducted into school attended by children, during school time. Participants have been tested in a quiet room reserved for testing. The test administration time was approximately 40 min. The examiners were trained Psychologists, graduate students from the Postgraduate School of Clinical Psychology of the University of L'Aquila, Italy. The examiners were blinded to the research objectives.

The procedure was composed of two detecting data steps: (1) by self-report parents and (2) children cognitive evaluation. First step was represented by the involvement of the parents to fill out the self-report questionnaire in order to detect the technology using form children in their daily time. Second step was the cognitive assessment of the children by application of psychological battery.

#### Self-Report Parents

Applying the self-report questionnaire it was possible to detect the frequency of the use of technology by children; the children were classified in High Digital users (HD) and Low Digital (LD) users.

#### TABLE 2 | Self-report questionnaire.

(2) During the day, how long time your child spends for electronical devices?

(6) If yes, when does he/she prefer to read:

Only when the teacher asks it

	- Half hour
	- 1 hour
	- 2–3 hour
	- More than 3 hours

#### Children Cognitive Evaluation

Standardized psychological tests have been applied to measure the cognitive abilities by quantitative data.

# RESULTS

The data have been analyzed by the SPSS program version 20, and the significance level have been fixed at alpha < 0.05.

In **Table 3** are reported the raw scores of the sample in the psychological battery.

Firstly, data were elaborated by age variable. The sample was distributed into four groups of age: 7 year olds, 8 year olds, 9 year olds, 10 year olds groups. One-way-ANOVA was conducted to elaborate the performance of children along the age. As expected, children improve progressively their performance in verbal and visuoperceptual abilities: the results have evidenced significative effects for the groups in observed cognitive abilities (see **Table 3**).

Then, the scores obtained in standardized tests were transformed in z score and then we combined tests measuring visuoperceptual and verbal abilities.

Then, we divided the sample in n. 2 categorical digital use groups: high digital user (HD) and low digital user (LD); the applied criteria was the frequency and intensity of technology the children by detected data by experimental questionnaire filled out from parents. The distribution, as expected and inline of literature, resulted significant different: HD group was composed of n. 141 children (74%), and LD group n. 51 (26%).

In **Table 4** are reported the cognitive performance in z score.

A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to determine the cognitive profile of sample distributed in two groups (HD and LD users) obtained in the composite score.

A MANOVA 4x2 on verbal tasks was conducted; the results have evidenced a significative multivariate effect for the groups [Pillai's Trace F(4,186) = 0.690; p = 0.02; η 2p = 0.05]; additionally, the Box's M value of 13.2 was associated with a p-value of 0.23. Univariate results showed a significative effect for some verbal tasks: naming test [ F(1,189) = 5.10; p = 0.02; η 2p = 0.02] and Category fluency test [ F(1,189) = 8.7; p = 0.004; η 2p = 0.04].

Then, a MANOVA 4x2 was applied on visuoperceptual tasks and it has showed a significative multivariate effect [Pillai's Trace F(4,186) = 2.7; p = 0.03; η2p = 0.05]; the Box's M value of 16.8 was associated with a p-value of 0.09. Univariate showed a difference only on below visuoperceptual tasks: Corsi tapping test [ F(1,189) = 4.5; p = 0.03; η 2p = 0.02] and Raven Progressive Matrices [ F(1,189) = 7.5; p = 0.007; η 2p = 0.03]. In **Figures 1** , **2** are represented the significative performance of two digital groups.

Finally, it has been examined the gender effect on two digital groups. A MANOVA 4x2x2 (4 tasks × 2 digital groups × 2 sex) on both verbal and visuoperceptual performance; it have evidenced no significative multivariate effects.

# DISCUSSION

Aim of the research was to detect the impact of the technology in childhood in order to analyze its influence on cognitive development. Frequently, it is accepted the digital skills as

#### TABLE 4 | z score of the sample's cognitive performance.

enhanced learning: scholastic successful, intellective performance and daily advantage represent consistent variables in childhood and youth. Hsin et al. (2014) have highlighted two aspects in the development of digital skills: (a) skills and competences needed to use technology and (b) perceptions of technology use. Both of them are basic for the development of digital learning. Emerging debate is the measuring of the technology effectiveness.

Indeed, our results showed that the high digital skills are related to the improvement of the cognitive development. Children with high level have better performance in cognitive ability of language (naming and semantic skills) and visual (planning of the logical reasoning and visual memory). Those results are interesting: the digital exposition by gaming in early time could be a great instrument to favor the increased cognitive development of the children in digitalization world. Children so well-stimulated in early time by tasks related to pleasure (digital games) present an advantage in the intellective competence that will be useful the learning processing and much more in the adaptation to the educational and

then working requests. Our data evidenced also a large technology use in childhood: the large part of children is digital skilled and can access to the technology in different way and easily; moreover, a small but relevant children group is digital unskilled and represents a lack of efficiency and equality to the access to the complexity of learning system.

In literature, our study is interesting because propose to investigate the efficacy and the functionally of the digital exposition in early age; more researchers have studied on the use of the technology in life of the people, in lifespan, but they were focused on quality of life. The key point of our study is the evidence that the digital skills are featured by tailored cognitive performance. Our research wanted to contribute to the new research trend of the digital impact on the cognitive development of human like technology is not only the enhancing of the learning processing but also just a good instrument for the intellective development. Technology has a strong impact on people life not only in terms of changing but much more of better leaping up the individual potentiality.

Our finding confirms the data present in literature and suggests the strong impact of the technology using not only in the social, educational and quality of life of the people, but also it outlines the functionality and the effect of the digital exposition in early age in order to increase the cognitive abilities of the children tailoring digital skilled generation with enhanced cognitive processing.

Secondary data of our study was the detection of a small (definitely) but still present group of children technologically unskilled, just because inaccessible in early time of life. That is a relevant aspect representing the early disadvantage (external variable) to develop the smart learning following traditional educational scheme.

# CONCLUSION

The technology has a strong impact on the quality of life of the human: the exposition of the children in young age to digital gaming favors advantage of learning capability not only in terms of high successful in educational path, but much more in the cognitive functionality by enhancing the verbal/visuoperceptual performance. The technology changes the life of the people improving the wellness in the social context and refining the learning processing, enhancing the cognitive performance and so favoring high adaptability in the elaboration information processing. Taking into account that, the learning processing reflects the changing becoming 'smart learning' for improved cognition.

A limit of present study is to have detected the digital skills by self-report method; beside we applied a standard measurement of cognitive performance. Could be interesting to measure digital skills by direct measurements and evaluate the correlated effect on cognitive development in childhood. Moreover, our

preliminary analyses are interesting and significant to outline our next research focus for future investigations. Implications of our study can be in future leaning context and procedures in order to support educational needs of new generations fitting the efficacy on the cognitive potentiality.

# REFERENCES

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The study was leaded by DG; and she wrote and analyzed data. JR has collaborated to the data collecting. PL has supervised the manuscript.

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2017 Di Giacomo, Ranieri and Lacasa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# Associations among Different Internet Access Time, Gender and Cyberbullying Behaviors in Taiwan's Adolescents

Cheng-Min Chao1 and Tai-Kuei Yu2 \*

1 Department of Business Administration, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taichung, Taiwan, 2 Department of Business Administration, National Quemoy University, Kinmen, Taiwan

With the increasing convenience of social networking sites and their interconnectedness with human interaction, verbal and image bullying have turned digital, making cyberbullying a new form of bullying attracting the attention of researchers, social workers, and schools. This study focuses on the status quo of attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behavior, explores associations of attitude toward behavior on cyberbullying behavior in gender and different internet access times. In a cross-sectional survey, adolescents were surveyed through self-report questionnaires, 13,864 respondents were received among 150 high schools in Taiwan. Statistical analyses were performed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The study revealed that attitude toward cyberbullying has a direct effect on cyberbullying behavior; among the greatest direct impact were when students use the Internet during the time frame 10:00–14:00. Parents and schoolteachers pay special attention to students using the Internet during this time frame 10:00–14:00 and give guidance, express care, and help those being bullied to communicate and use the Internet in a correct manner. Among genders, male student attitude toward behavior has a greater effect than those of female students. Both male and female students know what cyberbullying is and have witnessed, heard of, or personally encountered cyberbullying behavior. We recommend students talk to parents or teachers or other people who care to reduce the negative effects of cyberbullying. We hopeful that the conceptualization model presented in this study serves as an activator for researches on attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behavior, and serves a guide and a call to attract more researches in this area.

Keywords: adolescent, cyberbullying behavior, attitude toward cyberbullying, internet use, partial least squares (PLS)

# INTRODUCTION

With the advancement of technology and the widespread access to the Internet, the Internet has revolutionized the way in which people connect and communicate lives (Chao et al., 2013; Pawlikowski et al., 2014; Good and Fang, 2015; Quinones and Kakabadse, 2015; Wegmann et al., 2015; Hsieh et al., 2016). According to the Taiwan Communication Survey (2015) Internet project

#### Edited by:

Dina Di Giacomo, University of L'Aquila, Italy

#### Reviewed by:

Patricia Moreno-Peral, Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Málaga, Spain Andrej Košir, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

> \*Correspondence: Tai-Kuei Yu<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Human-Media Interaction, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 22 March 2017 Accepted: 14 June 2017 Published: 30 June 2017

#### Citation:

Chao C-M and Yu T-K (2017) Associations among Different Internet Access Time, Gender and Cyberbullying Behaviors in Taiwan's Adolescents. Front. Psychol. 8:1104. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01104

reported findings from a national survey of about ninety percent of Taiwanese young people between 9 and 17 years are on the internet and this statistic has been on the rise (Taiwan Communication Survey, 2015). These young people spend about an average of 3 h per day on the Internet. And 14 year old teenagers spend the longest time about an average of 3.5h online per day (Taiwan Communication Survey, 2015). In the past decade, the exponential growth of information technology and the widespread access to the Internet, adolescents have tended to spend more time in the cyber world. Internet provides new information, social-related information, and social networking opportunities but also simultaneously contains risks and a serious form of misbehavior among adolescents, such as: Internet addiction, cyberbullying, cyber pornography, health risks, Internet fraud and cyber victimization that can hurt and distort an adolescents' development (Bauman et al., 2013).

Cyberbullying and Internet addiction are a serious issue for young people in the World. The prevalence rates of cyberbullying vary based on the population studied (i.e., gender, age group), the form of cyberbullying is being measured, and the measure is used to assess cyberbullying incidents. Of note, the majority of cyberbullying studies have focused on youth between the age of 10 and 17 (Kowalski and Limber, 2007; Yılmaz, 2011; Chang et al., 2013; Cleemput et al., 2014; Özdemir, 2014; Taiwan Communication Survey, 2015). Cyberbullying among adolescents has emerged as a new form of bullying and has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years because the ratio of adolescents using the Internet has increased quickly, especially in social networking sites, chat rooms, and instant messaging applications. Adolescents feel a sense of solidarity and identity through the aforementioned applications (Anderson et al., 2014; Dredge et al., 2014; Palladino et al., 2015). Cyberbullying behavior and traditional school bullying have some commonality (Bauman et al., 2013; Waasdorp and Bradshaw, 2015). In fact, it has been found that cyberbullying may lead to more severe negative outcomes when compared to traditional bullying. From a traditional point of view, the perpetrators of cyberbullying use online videos, pictures and words in digital form to threaten, ridicule, and insult others. Research suggests that cyberbullying may negatively impact multiple aspects of adolescents mental health includes: depression, social anxiety, suicide, low self-esteem, etc; and behavioral problems include deterioration of relationships between family members and a drop in grades and other negative outcomes (Anderson et al., 2014; Dredge et al., 2014). However, not all victims of cyberbullying have had a negative repercussions (Patchin and Hinduja, 2006; Burgess-Proctor et al., 2009); exploring the consequences of cyberbullying is also rather important.

Cyberbullying is defined as the behavior of using modern communication technology to post pictures, videos, communication device [including: mobile phones, social networking sites (SNS), instant messenger (IM), e-mail, facebook, blog, etc], or texts that ridicule, insult, threaten, or intimidate a person and cause feelings of hurt in said person (Huang and Chou, 2010, 2013; Anderson et al., 2014; Cleemput et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2014; Watts et al., 2017). In a United States sample of 3,767 middle school students in 6th-8th grades (aged 11–14), around 11% of 6th-8th grade students had cyberbullied others within the 2 months prior to completing the survey; 4% had cyberbullied someone (cyberbully); and 7% had cyberbullied others and had also been both cyberbullies and victims (Kowalski and Limber, 2007). The Taiwan cyberbullying of adolescents project reported findings from a national survey of 1,959 students (ages 9–17). Of the respondents, 5.8% said that they had been the victims of cyberbullying, whereas 8.3% said that they had engaged in bullying behavior online (Taiwan Communication Survey, 2015). Among all the ways of youth cyberbullying, social media (e.g., Facebook or Plurk) is the most common one. About 2/3 (68.7%) of the interviewees said that they had been bullied on social media, and about 1/2 (42.3%) had been bullied when playing online games. Even on IMs, chatrooms, forums, BBS (Bulletin Board System), cyberbullying is a frequently occurred incident (Taiwan Communication Survey, 2015). There is approximately 1 among 4 people who had been bullied while using the above mentioned online services (IMs: 25.6%; chatrooms, etc.: 24.8%) (Taiwan Communication Survey, 2015). Ditch the Label (2013) released its annual cyberbullying report which combines the largest bullying-related data set of over 10,000 young people with key questions surrounding cyberbullying and the use of integrated digital technology within the lives of young people. In cyberbullying and social networks issue, of all youths polled, 75% of them use facebook and 54% have experienced cyberbullying. In addition, this report also revealed that cyberbullying happens mostly on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Myspace. Ditch the Label (2016) surveyed 8,850 young people aged 12–20 in partnership with schools and colleges from across the all across the UK. The results showed that people who have been bullied are almost twice as likely to bully others; boys bully twice as more as (66% of males versus 31% females); 44% of young people who have been bullied experience depression; 33% of those being bullied have suicidal thoughts. The ease of producing information online, fast and widespread dissemination, coupled with anonymous posting, and the elimination of the pressures of face-to-face confrontation have made it easier and quicker for a cyberbully to hurt others. The evolution of this new form of bullying deserves the attention of educators because this kind of bullying and oppressive behavior causes great harm to students and adolescents undergoing personality development.

Past studies have shown that the effects of cyberbullying are more severe than traditional bullying in four different ways: (Anderson et al., 2014; Dredge et al., 2014) (1) the identity of the perpetrator of cyberbullying is unknown; (2) the number of bullies is greater; (3) the rate of information sharing is faster; (4) the record of bullying lasts forever, much like insulting a person repeatedly. With cyberbullying, there is no direct way for perpetrators to know the effect of their behavior on the victim. Hence, the victim may feel terror, pressure, and other adverse effects when the victim does not know the identity of the perpetrator. When the victim is under pressure, there is a

higher probability for violent behavior (Huang and Chou, 2013; Anderson et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2014).

Existing empirical research have examined the influence of cyberbullying and victimization among adolescents. The results show that parenting behavior, good family relations (such as: parental monitoring, positive parent–adolescent relationships and communication) can decrease involvement in risky activities of cyberbullying (Law et al., 2010; Stadler et al., 2010; Özdemir, 2014). But, adolescents tend not to share negative experiences with their parents. For instance, Tokunaga (2010) found that although about 20–40% of adolescents are victims of cyberbullying, most choose not to tell their parents. Among the victims, suicidal tendency is higher than among non-victims. Also, 16% of adolescents admitted to cyberbullying behavior once or regularly. Yılmaz (2011) found that about 62% of students who had been cyber bullied did not discussed the problem with parents or teachers. In a recent study of 2,992 Taiwan high school students in 10th grade, 18.4% had been cyberbullied (cybervictim); 5.8% had cyberbullied others (cyberbully); 11.2% had both cyberbullied others and been cyberbullied (cyberbully victim) (Chang et al., 2013). According to findings published from the Taiwan Communication Survey (2015), middle and high school students are more likely to become victims of cyberbullying. Also, among 9–17 year olds in Taiwan, 5.8% have been victims of cyberbullying and 8.3% have bullied others. The most common channels were social media sites and online games. When faced with cyberbullying, 36.7% of the adolescents surveyed ignored the behavior. For example, during information class, one high school student, May, learned about attitudes toward cyberbullying and grasped a deeper understanding as the teacher frequently applies real world cases to teach students the definition of cyberbullying and how to deal with such behavior in her information course. Sometimes May witnesses classmates bad-mouthing another classmate or sending photos or videos mocking said classmate. May has realized that cyberbullying does exist in real life from her observation of online news stories on the negative effects of cyberbullying on artists and students. As May increasingly used the Internet, she saw more cases of cyberbullying and understood the contexts of cyberbullying.

Behavioral beliefs can vary from individuals' attitude toward the behavior. In other words, individuals with a more positive attitude toward a certain behavior tend to perform the behavior. Ho et al. (2017) explored factors related to cyberbullying on social media among children and adolescents in Singapore. The results showed that individuals with less favorable attitude had a lower likelihood to engage in cyberbullying behavior. Doane et al. (2014) explored cyberbullying perpetration among American college students. The results presented strong positive correlations between attitude, subjective norms, and cyberbullying perpetration. Many previous studies have found that attitude toward cyberbullying is significantly associated with cyberbullying (Perren and Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012; Doane et al., 2014; Ho et al., 2017).

About the relationship between cyberbullying and genders of adolescents. Previous research investigating the significant differences of the incidences of cyberbullying displays inconclusive findings. Huang and Chou (2010) argue that gender has long been associated with aggressive behaviors, and it may result in different types of bullying among adolescents. Some researchers found no significant differences of cyberbullying experiences between male and female youth (e.g., Ybarra and Mitchell, 2004; Similarly, Patchin and Hinduja, 2006), while others do not support this view (e.g., Kowalski and Limber, 2007). Some researchers have shown that males are more likely to be perpetrators of cyberbullying than are females (Huang and Chou, 2010; Chang et al., 2015; Lee and Shin, 2017). In conclusion, the relationship between adolescent cyberbullying and the genders seem ambiguous. Therefore, further investigation is necessary. In addition, most prior research of cyberbullying has focused on the factors and the influences it has on mental and physical health (Chang et al., 2013; Anderson et al., 2014; Dredge et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2014) and the differences between cyber and traditional bullying. With the Internet become more common, and people spend more time online, cyberbullying, especially between students, has become an important topic. However, there is a lack of examinations how different attitudes toward cyberbullying of students with different levels of Internet addiction affect their cyberbullying behaviors.

In recent years, adolescent Internet addiction has emerged as a major issue.  The prevalence of youth Internet addiction varies widely across countries, with the early studies of Internet addiction reported findings from a survey conducted in 11 European countries, taken by about 11,000 adolescents (mean age: 14.9 ± 0.89). The results showed that the overall prevalence of Internet addiction was 4.4%, higher among males than females (5.2% versus 3.8%) (Durkee et al., 2012). In Poland, about 2–9% of young people have very serious problems caused by Internet usage (Hawi et al., 2015), and the prevalence in Hong Kong at between 6.7 and 26.7% (Wang et al., 2015). According to the survey of Taiwan Network Information Center [TWNIC] (2015), during the last 6 months, 79.7% of Taiwanese people aged 12 and more who use the Internet have spent approximately 3.42 h online per daily, and 3.35 h per daily during holidays. The most common Internet activities are visiting online communities and using IMs (Taiwan Network Information Center [TWNIC], 2015). Internet addiction prevalence estimation varies across countries due to differences in diagnostic criteria as well as the psychometric tools utilized for assessment (Hawi et al., 2015; Boysan et al., 2017). Kuss et al. (2014) found that there are currently 21 existing instruments for measuring Internet addiction. Current screening scales of Internet Addiction are mainly adopted from Young's Internet addiction Scales (Young, 1998), which appeared as one of the earliest conceptualizations and is still being commonly adopted nowadays. Taiwan's popular Chinese versions of Internet addiction scales also uses the symptoms of DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria, for substance addiction as the diagnostic indicator (Ko et al., 2005; Yen et al., 2009). To conclude, Internet addiction among teenagers is a relatively serious problem. A comprehensive Internet addiction

measuring tool might effectively categorize the addiction levels. In addition, previous research seldom covers Internet addiction together with cyberbullying. It is especially important to examine the influence of different Internet addiction levels on the cyberbullying behaviors.

To summarize, cyberbullying gives birth to a new kind of public physical and mental health problem that negatively impacts the everyday life of a substantial number of adolescents. The effect of attitude toward cyberbullying on cyberbullying behavior is an important topic for discussion. Therefore, the purposes of the present research are (1) to investigate antecedent (attitude toward cyberbullying) for cyberbullying behaviors, and (2) to examine the effects of gender, most frequent Internet access time, and Internet addiction situations on cyberbullying behaviors. In order to understand the association between attitudes toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behavior modulates by gender and different internet access. This study aims to address the following research questions: (1) Does attitudes toward cyberbullying influence the cyberbullying behaviors? (2) How does the gender, most frequent Internet access time, and Internet addiction the impacts of cyberbullying behaviors? To minimize cyberbullying, the results of this study provide references for parents, schools, and government educational units, further adding emphasis on the effects of cyberbullying and the problems raised.

# MATERIALS AND METHODS

# Hypotheses and Research Model Development

In order to understand the association between attitudes toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behavior modulates by gender and different internet access. The purposes of the present research are (1) to investigate antecedent (attitude toward cyberbullying) for cyberbullying behaviors, and (2) to examine the effects of gender, most frequent Internet access time, and Internet addiction situations on cyberbullying behaviors.

According to the previous research (Perren and Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012; Doane et al., 2014; Ho et al., 2017) pointed out that positive correlations between attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behaviors. Consequently, this appears to support that attitude toward cyberbullying is the strongest predictor of cyberbullying behaviors. In addition, the effect of gender on cyberbullying is controversial. Some researchers have shown that males are more likely to be perpetrators of cyberbullying than are females. Other researchers, however, indicate no gender effect on cyberbullying behaviors (Ybarra and Mitchell, 2004; Similarly, Patchin and Hinduja, 2006; Roberto et al., 2014).

On a global scale, the reported prevalence estimates for adolescent Internet addiction vary between 2% (Poland) and 26.7% (Hong Kong) (Hawi et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015). Thus, adolescent Internet addiction has emerged as a major issue. Although there exists extensive research in the field of Internet addiction, most researches are lacking in cyberbullying. It is especially important to examine the influence of different Internet addiction levels on the Internet bullying behaviors. Based on the abovementioned considerations, we advance the following hypotheses:

Hypotheses 1: Attitude toward cyberbullying has a significant effect on cyberbullying behaviors.

Hypotheses 2: The moderating effect of gender exists between the Attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behaviors.

Hypotheses 3: The moderating effect of most frequent Internet access time exists between the Attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behaviors.

Hypotheses 4: The moderating effect of Internet addiction exists between the Attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behaviors.

# Measures

This study used questionnaires as the main instruments for data collection. In the questionnaires, the instrument was designed 38 questions with a four-part questionnaire, includes: The content of the questionnaire includes four components: (1) basic information of the student and Internet usage; (2) attitude toward cyberbullying (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree), (3) cyberbullying behavior (1 = not at all, 4 = very often), and (4) Internet addiction (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree). The Likert four point scale was used in the "Attitude toward Cyberbullying," "Cyberbullying Behavior," and Internet addiction sections. The self-reporting inventory was used for filling out the questionnaire. The questionnaire used is shown in **Table 1**. Due to the nature of the questions in "Cyberbullying Behavior," there is a tendency for participants to avoid them, causing common method variance (CMV). We chose to write the questions from a third party perspective to evaluate stories the respondents have heard or saw about cyberbullying. We undertook a large sample to avoid CMV and to increase the reliability power of this study.

The instruments were developed after a thorough review of several previous studies on attitude toward cyberbullying, cyberbullying behavior, and Internet addiction. Our scale development followed MacKenzie et al. (2011) and the development procedures suggested by DeVellis (2003) for standard psychometric scales. The measurement items for the constructs of attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behavior were adapted from the measurement developed by previous studies (Yılmaz, 2011; Chang et al., 2013; Anderson et al., 2014; Cleemput et al., 2014; Dredge et al., 2014). To define adolescents Internet addiction scale, which was modified from the Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS), Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and other measurement tool about Internet Addiction (Young, 1998; Ko et al., 2005; Kuss et al., 2014; Hawi et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015; Chen and Nath, 2016; Hsieh et al., 2016; Boysan et al., 2017; Servidio, 2017) to measure Internet addiction.

A pilot test using the questionnaire was conducted on 1,225 senior high school students (including vocational high school students) in central Taiwan to evaluate the revised questionnaire in terms of readability, ease of understanding, and formatting issues prior to the actual test. Further, a Cronbach's alpha test

#### TABLE 1 | Questionnaire items.

fpsyg-08-01104 June 28, 2017 Time: 18:49 # 5

was performed to test the reliability and internal consistency of each of the 32 measured attributes. The alpha coefficients for all of the 32 attributes ranged from 0.62 to 0.74, which respectively exceeded the minimum value of 0.6 that is widely used as an indicator of reliability (Hair et al., 2010). Subjects who participated in the pilot test were excluded from the subsequent study.

# Participants

In the Taiwanese educational system, elementary, junior and senior high school education is compulsory, children enter the elementary school at the age of 7 or 8 years and complete this stage of their education by the age of 13 or 14 years. Then, they enter junior high school for 3 years followed by a further 3 years at senior high school (including vocational high school). The years at junior high school are termed as the 7th–9th grade, and those at senior high school (including vocational high school) are termed as the 10th–12th grade. To understand the effect of attitude toward cyberbullying on cyberbullying behavior among senior and vocational high school students in Taiwan. As of May 2014, 344 senior high schools and 155 vocational high schools (499 in total) were registered. The sample was first stratified by region (northern, central, southern, and eastern), then stratified by school type (senior high schools and vocational high schools). This cross-sectional survey was conducted in Taiwan among 17- to 19-year-old senior and vocational high school adolescents. Participants were recruited from 150 high schools in Taiwan through stratified and random cluster sampling. Of these, 103 senior high schools (selection rate, 29.9%) and 47 vocational high schools (selection rate, 30.3%) were selected. At every school, 100 students were surveyed through questionnaires.

This research adopted a quantitative survey and utilized mail or face-to-face interviews for high schools that were willing to participate in the survey. The first step, we contacted a teacher who service in academic affairs in each high school to ensure his/her cooperation. They helped explain the content of the questionnaire to the respondents, the duration of data collection took around 8 months. A total of 15,000 questionnaires were sent at the same time. All responses to the self-report instruments were collected during a regular school-day in classrooms and in the presence of the class teacher. All students enrolled in the sampled schools were the participants of this study. Participation in the study was completely voluntary. In total, 13,864 valid responses were received, and the response rate was 92.4%.

# Statistical Analysis

fpsyg-08-01104 June 28, 2017 Time: 18:49 # 6

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in a comprehensive, combined analysis of both the measurement and structural model. According to Hair et al. (2011), although the covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) has dominated since its first appeared in the 1980s, the partial least square SEM (PLS-SEM) has called a great deal of attention in recent years. PLS is component-based and uses a least-squares estimation procedure. For the actual data analyses, we used the SmartPLS 2.0 M3 software developed by Ringle et al. (2005) to test the research model of both the measurement and structural model. The results of the SEM estimation, including standardized path coefficients for each hypothesized path in the model, significance based on one-tailed t-tests, and the amount of variance explained (R 2 ).

# RESULTS

# Demographic Variables

In total, 13,864 (6,747 were male, 7,117 were female) usable responses were obtained. The average age of the participants was 17.33 years (SD = 0.94 years). The first time Internet access for the sample population indicated 39.3% were K3 to K4 grades. Most frequent Internet access time for the sample population indicated 73.6% were 18:00∼22:00. Place of Internet usage for the sample population indicated 92.6% were Home. **Table 2** shows the demographic and Internet usage characteristics of the sample.

# Measurement Model Evaluation

Using linear structural relational estimations and traditional alphas, the assessment of the measurement model includes three indices: reliability coefficients (Cronbach's α), average variance extracted (AVE), and composite reliability coefficients. The results presented in **Table 3**, all values displayed a higher Cronbach's α coefficient than the 0.60 benchmark recommended by Hair et al. (2010). The constructs also exhibited a higher composite reliability than the benchmark of 0.6 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). That all of the convergent validity were exceeded this criteria, except for behavioral of cyberbullying.

# Hypotheses Testing

In the PLS analysis, the R 2 values are used as a goodness-offit measure. The construct of attitude toward cyberbullying was significant determinants of cyberbullying behavior (β = 0.33, t = 37.33, p < 0.01). This research model explained 10.9% of the variance in cyberbullying behavior. **Table 4** shows the results of further investigation: firstly, male students have higher coefficient (β = 0.34, t = 25.84, p < 0.01) and explanatory ability (R 2 = 0.116) in their effects of attitude toward cyberbullying on behavior. Secondly, students surf the Internet during 10:00 to 14:00, which leads to higher coefficient (β = 0.40, t = 9.66, p < 0.01) and explanatory ability (R 2 = 0.161). That reveals attitude toward cyberbullying has more significant impact on cyberbullying behavior for students who access the Internet during 10:00 to 14:00. Third, among different Internet addiction situations, most students are Internet addicted, which leads to higher coefficient (β = 0.28, t = 15.75, p < 0.01) and explanatory ability (R 2 = 0.078). The data reveals that when students are addicted to the Internet, the influence on their cyberbullying behaviors are highly significant.

# DISCUSSION

The analysis of this study shows that attitude toward cyberbullying has an effect on cyberbullying. The explanatory power is 10.9%, the reason being when faced with cyberbullying, most are afraid to publicize it, nor do they tell their parents or ask for help. Also, students are unsure of the definition of cyberbullying and are unable to detect cyberbullying when confronted. Some students mistake cyberbullying as making fun of peers, so they do not pay attention, and suddenly realizing the severity of the situation after the effects of cyberbullying have already snowballed. For example, high school student Jason picked up his classmate, Jackson's, phone. Jason posted indecent photos of Jackson from his phone on the Internet as a joke, unaware that this was cyberbullying behavior. Jackson committed suicide as a result. We recommend teachers remind students to not like, respond, or share posts criticizing or bullying others and to not participate in suspicious search engine activities to avoid being an accomplice to cyberbullying. When a student is faced with cyberbullying or discovering a classmate being cyberbullied, teachers and parents should be notified immediately to put an end to this behavior.

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors associated with cyberbullying behaviors based on attitude toward cyberbullying. In this study, the individuals with less favorable attitude had a lower likelihood to engage in cyberbullying behavior. This is consistent with previous research, where a positive correlation was found between positive attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behaviors (Perren and Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012; Doane et al., 2014; Ho et al., 2017). Results also indicated that attitude toward cyberbullying was the key predictor of cyberbullying behavior. Besides, some previous studies (Selkie et al., 2015; Watts et al., 2017) have shown that when one has been a cyberbully or a victim of it, they tend to fall into these same categories in college. Therefore, high school teachers should try to prevent students from being cyberbullies or cybervictims. In order to achieve that, students' attitude toward cyberbullying is important as it is to the behaviors. Past scholars (Washington, 2014; Watts et al., 2017) suggested instructors must take a more active role in monitoring online interactions to prevent cyberbullying among students.

It is difficult for parents or teachers to monitor the Internet; everyone browsing SNSs or other websites is a spectator, and the number of spectators can multiply, augmenting cyberbullying. Therefore, to deter the growth of online violence, future cyberbullying prevention and relevant education should start with spectators taking action and the establishment of the concept of using the Internet for positive uses. From the school's perspective, teachers need to understand the motives for cyberbullying. Every online user, regardless of their identity or

#### TABLE 2 | Profiles of respondents (N = 13864).

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#### TABLE 3 | Validity and reliability.

Among genders, male student attitude toward behavior has a greater effect than those of female students. Both male and female students know what cyberbullying is and have witnessed, heard of, or personally encountered cyberbullying behavior. The results of the survey show that regardless of gender, when confronted with cyberbullying, students choose to keep to themselves and not ask for help. We recommend victims of cyberbullying to not keep quiet about an incident and to mitigate the negative effects

through the care of concerning adults. Cyberbullying is not a short-term phenomenon, but a vicious cycle. One feels the need to retort when being bullied, then the cyberbully strikes back, creating a cycle of bullying. Parents and teachers can inform the students of the correct attitude to deal with cyberbullying and even ask for the school's help, minimizing the damage done by cyberbullying.

In terms of most frequent Internet access time, students online during the 10:00–14:00 were most affected by attitude toward cyberbullying on cyberbullying behavior. Students utilize this time frame to check the latest status on SNSs as it is their rest time at school. Cyberbullying messages may be intermixed with replies on any given video and photo post. This group is not only at high risk for cyberbullying, they are also considerably addicted to the Internet and unable to stay off the Internet for long periods of time. Because this is during school hours, schools have a stronger capability in disciplining this group. We recommend schools and teachers to pay special attention to and try to understand the browsing habits and online interactions of this group to reduce the incidence of cyberbullying. Also, to diminish the incidence of cyberbullying, teachers need to understand the reasons for such behavior, strengthen guidance offered to students, debunk myths pertinent to the Internet and cyberbullying, emphasize the harm done to victims of cyberbullying, and educate students about the consequences of cyberbullying from a legal standpoint.

Additionally, focusing on students of different Internet addiction levels, this study examined the influence of cyberbullying attitudes on the behaviors. The results indicate that students who are addicted to the Internet showed the influence of higher cyberbullying attitudes on the behaviors and explanatory power. Social media (e.g., Facebook, Plurk) and online games are the most participated online activities for Internet addicts. These activities are also where teenager cyberbullying happens. When students are playing online games or chatting via social media, they are exposed in the cyberbullying environment. Cyberbullying incidents are no rare cases for students to witness. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers should develop correct attitude toward Internet usage, which parents should also pay attention to. When a problem occurs, it is recommended to reach related organizations or schools for help to decrease the impacts led by different Internet addiction levels.

# Limitations and Future Research

There are several limitations in this study that should be addressed in future studies. First, this study focuses on the status quo of attitude toward cyberbullying and cyberbullying behavior, explores associations of attitude toward behavior on cyberbullying behavior in gender, different internet access times, and Internet addiction situations. The results showed gender, different internet access times, and levels of Internet addiction, the influence of cyberbullying attitudes on the behaviors. In the research, it was not considered whether the different internet access times, and levels of Internet addiction as variables precede (or predict) the cyberbullying behaviors. Future research should treat Internet access time and Internet addiction as antecedent variables in order to fully examine their effects of cyberbullying behaviors. Second, this study did not specifically classify the objects into groups of Internet addiction and non-Internet addiction. Therefore, we suggest using experimental designs to examine the differences between Internet addictions and noninternet addictions, so as to provide references to senior and vocational high school teachers, parents, and school managers Third, while we used cross-sectional data in this study, for it is useful for correlation purposes, causal relations cannot be concluded from such data. Fourth, previous studies' participants have reported cyberbullying behavior according to their own personal experience. Participants are more likely to evade such questions so as to avoid judgment, causing CMV. This study uses the self-report inventory, but the items in the questions are from a third person point of view, measuring cyberbullying behavior the participant saw or heard of online. Finally, one potential limitation of this study is that we measured variables in only one timeframe using self-report questionnaires, suggesting the potential for CMV. We tested for CMV using the Harman one factor test, which showed that all constructs explained roughly an equal amount of variance, suggesting that common method bias was not an issue in this study. This study also undertakes a large data collection and sample to circumvent the problem of CMV.

# ETHICS STATEMENT

The study procedures were carried out in accordance with the APA Ethics Code. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. All subjects were informed about the research, and all provided informed consent. Given the subject matter, no ethical external approval was required under Taiwan law. All participants in the study were received the opportunity to refuse participation at any time without consequences.

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

C-MC: data collection, concept and design, interpretation of data, writing up; T-KY: obtaining funding, statistical analysis, interpretation of data, study supervision. All authors wrote the manuscript together and approved the final manuscript.

# FUNDING

The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for financially supporting this research under contract MOST 105-2511-S-507 -001 -MY3.

# REFERENCES

fpsyg-08-01104 June 28, 2017 Time: 18:49 # 9

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literacy, and psychopathological symptoms. J. Behav. Addict. 4, 155–162. doi: 10.1556/2006.4.2015.021

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2017 Chao and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# A Virtual Object-Location Task for Children: Gender and Videogame Experience Influence Navigation; Age Impacts Memory and Completion Time

David Rodriguez-Andres1 , Magdalena Mendez-Lopez2 \*, M.-Carmen Juan1 and Elena Perez-Hernandez3

1 Instituto Universitario de Automática e Informática Industrial, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain, 2 IIS Aragón, Departamento de Psicología y Sociología, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, 3 Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

#### Edited by:

Dina Di Giacomo, University of L'Aquila, Italy

#### Reviewed by:

Remco Veltkamp, Utrecht University, Netherlands Kening Zhu, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

> \*Correspondence: Magdalena Mendez-Lopez<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Human-Media Interaction, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 28 November 2017 Accepted: 19 March 2018 Published: 04 April 2018

#### Citation:

Rodriguez-Andres D, Mendez-Lopez M, Juan M-C and Perez-Hernandez E (2018) A Virtual Object-Location Task for Children: Gender and Videogame Experience Influence Navigation; Age Impacts Memory and Completion Time. Front. Psychol. 9:451. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00451 The use of virtual reality-based tasks for studying memory has increased considerably. Most of the studies that have looked at child population factors that influence performance on such tasks have been focused on cognitive variables. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of non-cognitive skills. In the present paper, we tested 52 typically-developing children aged 5–12 years in a virtual object-location task. The task assessed their spatial short-term memory for the location of three objects in a virtual city. The virtual task environment was presented using a 3D application consisting of a 12000 stereoscopic screen and a gamepad interface. Measures of learning and displacement indicators in the virtual environment, 3D perception, satisfaction, and usability were obtained. We assessed the children's videogame experience, their visuospatial span, their ability to build blocks, and emotional and behavioral outcomes. The results indicate that learning improved with age. Significant effects on the speed of navigation were found favoring boys and those more experienced with videogames. Visuospatial skills correlated mainly with ability to recall object positions, but the correlation was weak. Longer paths were related with higher scores of withdrawal behavior, attention problems, and a lower visuospatial span. Aggressiveness and experience with the device used for interaction were related with faster navigation. However, the correlations indicated only weak associations among these variables.

Keywords: virtual environment, behavior, emotion, short-term memory, visuospatial skill, children

# INTRODUCTION

Loomis et al. (1999) reviewed the potential of immersive virtual environment (VE) technology for experimental psychology. They described its value as a tool in research on spatial cognition. They highlighted its advantages in terms of methodological issues, that are difficult to achieve in practice without this type of technological support (e.g., facilitating the control of the delivered stimuli, manipulating variables, recording measurements and allowing exposure to complex and natural-appearing environments). VEs have also become quite popular for their contributions to

neuropsychological assessment. Measures of performance (e.g., correct responses and completion time) derived from tasks using VEs have shown moderate sensitivity in detecting cognitive impairments in clinical populations, especially in the assessment of visuospatial and memory skills (see the review of Negut et al., 2016). Some VEs have been used to study children's performance, reporting differences between typically-developing children and children with developmental issues (Bioulac et al., 2012; Courbois et al., 2013; Kalyvioti and Mikropoulos, 2013; Broadbent et al., 2015; Farran et al., 2015). Therefore, virtual reality-based tasks currently play an important role in the field of child psychological assessment as an adjunct to standardized classical tests.

The study of human spatial cognition using VEs became quite popular by emulating virtual tasks based on animal mazes (e.g., Astur et al., 2004; Cánovas et al., 2008). Other virtual tasks simulated familiar places for humans (e.g., Maïano et al., 2011; Purser et al., 2012; Burles et al., 2014). The VEs can be viewed on a computer screen (e.g., Astur et al., 2004; Merrill et al., 2016) or other virtual reality platforms, such as head-mounted displays (HMDs), which can provide a full 360◦ view (Siemerkus et al., 2012). In a typical spatial task, the person controls their movements in the virtual space to memorize places, objects, or routes using a joystick (e.g., Astur et al., 2004; Siemerkus et al., 2012; Walkowiak et al., 2015) or a keyboard (e.g., Purser et al., 2012; Merrill et al., 2016).

Virtual environments used for researching spatial navigation abilities in children have been very similar to those used for adult research (e.g., Hamilton et al., 2003; León et al., 2014; Broadbent et al., 2015; Nys et al., 2015). Children have been asked to navigated the VE and then were tested on their ability to retrace routes or to memorize places or objects. The results found can be extrapolated to results obtained within real environments (e.g., Schmelter et al., 2009). Also, these virtual tasks have been used to draw conclusions about difficulties in orientation in children with developmental disorders (e.g., Hamilton et al., 2003; Courbois et al., 2013; Fornasari et al., 2013; Broadbent et al., 2015).

Most of the studies looking at factors influencing children's performance in spatial tasks have been focused on cognitive variables such as visuospatial abilities (e.g., Nys et al., 2015), memory (e.g., Purser et al., 2012; Nys et al., 2015), executive functions (e.g., Purser et al., 2012), or navigational strategies (e.g., Bullens et al., 2010; León et al., 2014). The impact of children's non-cognitive skills on spatial task performance has been less studied. Van den Brink and Janzen (2013) considered the effects of self-care skills measured using the Vineland Screener. The authors found that there was a significant relation between adaptive functioning and the performance of 2 to 3-year-olds on a VR spatial task used for the assessment of orientation skills. They suggested that independence in everyday activities presented by some of the children was critical in improving their spatial knowledge because of a greater number of opportunities for exploring their spatial surroundings. Also, exploratory behavior was related to emotional factors in a study that tested children with autism (Fornasari et al., 2013) who were less active during free exploration of a virtual town. Children suffering from anxiety disorder also performed more poorly than control participants in a virtual Morris water maze (Mueller et al., 2009). They showed thigmotaxis behavior (i.e., the adaptive tendency to avoid exploring the central zone of a novel place) at the beginning of the test and higher numbers of heading errors and unsuccessful trials. Psychometrical measures of anxiety, but not depression, were related to the number of heading errors.

To our knowledge, there are no published studies about relationships between emotional factors and spatial performance in VEs in healthy children. We suggest that affective components and adaptive behavior could influence the performance of typically-developing children in a spatial task involving exploration of a VE. Previous studies performed in adults found that thigmotaxis behavior was positively correlated with affective components (Kallai et al., 2007). These results were obtained after controlling for gender differences in the levels of fear (i.e., women scored higher than men).  These studies yielded conclusions for young adults, but little is known about the relationships between these psychological variables and performance in the child population.

In the present study, we aimed to determine if the performance of typically-developing children in an emotionally neutral virtual-based spatial task is related to their behavioral and emotional outcomes. To do this, we used a basic shortterm memory test in which children were to learn the spatial locations of objects (i.e., the learning phase) and later were asked about the correct position of one of these objects (i.e., the testing phase). The VE of this virtual object-location (VOL) task consisted of a city square. To provide visual guidance, the square was surrounded by distal cues and proximal cues. The objects were associated to a place holder and located in the central area of the VE. The VE was presented using a 3D application consisting of a 12000 stereoscopic screen. The children could actively explore details required for orientation by traveling across the interaction area taking a first-person perspective. We chose a gamepad as the device for interaction because it has been preferred by children due to its playability (Rodríguez-Andrés et al., 2016). We tried to reduce the potential influence of individual differences in the experience with videogames and gamepads. For this reason, the participants were trained with the gamepad and performed a tutored trial of the task.

The VOL task was similar to the task used in Rodríguez-Andrés et al. (2016) in terms of the visual and procedural aspects; however, in the present study, we aimed to obtain information about how children's exploratory behaviors were. The present task assessed not only the ability of the children to recall the place of the objects, but also their way of exploring the interaction area of the VE. The aims of the study by Rodríguez-Andrés et al. (2016) were mainly to present the task, to validate the task for the assessment of spatial short-term memory, and to examine the influence of the type of interaction used on the ability to recall the place of the objects, and the perceived usability and satisfaction of the children with the task.

We obtained objective performance measures of the participating children on the VOL task (i.e., learning and displacement indicators). We assessed their perception about the task (3D perception, satisfaction, and usability) and previous

videogame experience. We also considered participant individual differences in the performance of small-scale visuospatial tasks (building blocks and visuospatial span), emotional outcomes (i.e., anxiety, depression, and aggressiveness), and behavioral outcomes (i.e., hyperactivity, withdrawal, and attention problems), which were obtained with a psychometric rating scale. We also considered the age and gender of the participants. The research questions are: (1) Does age, gender, or previous videogame experience of the children affect their performance on the VOL task?; and (2) Are there any significant relationships among performance of the VOL task and the user's variables (i.e., videogame experience, ratings about the experience with the VOL task, visuospatial skills, emotional and behavioral outcomes)?

We hypothesized that age would affect performance in the VOL task. We studied a wide age range, as the values of the learning indicators would be lower in children younger than 6 years. We did not expect to find an effect of gender on VOL task performance because of its low level of difficulty. The task involved remembering the locations of three objects that were shown sequentially with several proximal visual cues aiding orientation. Both boys and girls might use specific orientation strategies to solve the task. We did not expect to find an effect of videogame experience on task execution because the participants were trained before being tested. Finally, a higher ability for recalling objects in the VE would be linked with higher visuospatial skills on small-scale tests. The displacements made across the interaction area of the VE during performance of the task would be related to emotional and behavioral outcomes. Specifically, higher scores on anxiety would be related to a higher tendency to explore the boundaries of the VE.

# MATERIALS AND METHODS

# Participants

The participants were 52 right-handed, typically-developing children from 5 to 12 years old (22 girls and 30 boys; Mage ± SD = 8.06 ± 1.60). They were divided into three age groups: preschool (5–6 year olds; 5 boys and 4 girls); the first cycle of primary school (7–9 year olds; 18 boys and 13 girls); and the second cycle of primary school (10–12 year olds; 7 boys and 5 girls). They were recruited from a summer school. This final sample was selected after applying the inclusion criteria to a larger sample composed of 66 children. None of the participating children had visual or hearing impairments or had had a breech birth, required neonatal resuscitation, had a body temperature higher than 40◦ in the first 5 years of life, had suffered a brain injury, had any impairment in motor performance, or were treated with a medication that could potentially impair their cognitive functioning. A questionnaire was completed by their parents concerning their development and medical history. The parents also completed the Movement ABC-2 Checklist (Henderson et al., 2012) to discard any motivational or emotional difficulty related to motor tasks. We used the Lang-Stereo-Test (Lang, 1983) to check that the children could perceive 3D properly. All parents gave written informed consent before their children's participation. The study was conducted in accordance with the European Directive 2001/20/EC and the Helsinki Declaration for biomedical research involving humans. The University Ethics Committee approved the research protocol.

# The Testing Room and Instrumentation for the VOL Task

The testing room consisted of a square room of about 20 square meters (**Figure 1**). The child was placed in the middle of the room facing one of the walls on which was mounted a 120-inch screen. We used two projectors to send two images to the screen from the back. Each of the two projectors had a linear vertical polarizer. There was a difference of 90◦ between the directions of the two polarizers. The children wore linear polarized glasses to perceive the 3D sensation. These glasses had two vertical polarizers, one for each eye, that were aligned to match the directions of the projectors' polarizers. The interface used to control the child's movements in the VE was a PlayStation gamepad. We used Unity 3D as the game engine.

To run the application, we used a PC with an i7-4770k processor, 16 GB RAM memory, and a graphic card NVIDIA GTX770. The software and hardware used to develop the VOL task were described in Rodríguez-Andrés et al. (2016).

# The VOL Task

The task consisted of a short-term memory test for object location. Briefly, the participant had to search for objects that were placed on tables distributed in certain locations of a VE. Then, he/she had to remember their locations in order to place them in their correct positions later. There was a narrator who guided the participant through all phases of the task with her voice. She told the child what to do each time (e.g., "Remember the location of the objects that you are going to see now"; "Approach it and push the button when its color changes"; "You have to put this object in its correct position"). In Section "Training Phases and VOL Trials," we briefly describe the phases of the VOL task. More details about the VOL task can be found in Rodríguez-Andrés et al. (2016).

FIGURE 1 | The testing room for the VOL task.

## Training Phases

Before starting the trials of the VOL task, each child completed two separate phases: the adaptation phase and the tutorial phase. The aim of the adaptation phase was to familiarize the child with the interaction method. The child learned how to move inside a VE using the gamepad. In this phase, the participant was transported to a VE in mountainous terrain (**Figure 2**). Then, he/she had to follow a path across the mountains to arrive at a goal at the end of the path. Some arrows and bubbles showed the child which direction to follow.

In the tutorial phase, each child completed a short tutorial about how to perform the VOL task. He/she learned what the goal of the task was and how to achieve it. This phase was like a trial of the VOL task (see section "VOL Trials") except for the fact that the child received a visual indication of the position of the object during the testing phase. The visual indication consisted of a vertical green arrow pointing to the position of the object.

#### VOL Trials

The VE of the VOL task was simulated as a city square. The square was surrounded by several buildings (**Figure 3**). The child could move within the limits of an interaction area of the city square (**Figure 3A**). The buildings were outside of the interaction area of the child and worked as visual cues to help orient the participant with spatial orientation (distal cues). Inside the square, there were eight common objects of a city (proximal cues), which also served as guidance (**Figures 3A,B**). We defined two separate areas within the interaction area: the peripheral area, and the central area (**Figure 3C**). The peripheral area included a zone that was three meters away from the tables, whereas the central area included the area where objects were placed on tables (**Figure 3C**).

There were four VOL trials in the VOL task (see **Figure 4**). Each child completed these trials consecutively. The goal of these trials was to assess the children's short-term memory for object location. Each trial was divided into two separate phases: the learning phase, and the testing phase.

Short-term memories for visuospatial items were formed in the learning phase. In this phase, the child searched three gray tables with the aim of finding three hidden objects. These objects were shown one by one. The system guided the search process using a green arrow that pointed to one of the gray tables.

The child had to walk to the table, and, when the child was close enough, the table changed color from gray to green, and the child could see the object on that table for 5 s. The child had to repeat this process two more times to discover all of the objects. It is important to note that the children had to remember the objects they saw and where the objects were placed. At the end of each learning phase, the child returned to the center of the scene, and the VE was rotated 180◦ from the original position before starting the testing phase. Therefore, idiothetic information could not be used as a reference for orientation.

The testing phase consisted of the retrieval of the short-term memories for the visuospatial items that were formed in the learning phase. In this phase, the system showed an object on the screen and the narrator asked the participant for the position of that object. The participant had to put the object in its correct position to complete the trial. The position of the tables and the objects varied in the four different trials of the VOL task as shown in **Figure 4**. We included a score screen to keep the children motivated. They received a star when they finished the tutorial phase and each of the four VOL trials, regardless of the quality of their responses.

# Videogame Experience, 3D Perception, Satisfaction, and Usability Questionnaires

We designed a questionnaire to determine the participants' videogame experience, consisting of two items:"How often do you play with videogames on a PC or smartphone?" and "How often do you play videogames with a gamepad?" The children answered the two items using a five-point Likert scale ranging from "(1) Never" to "(5) Everyday." Also, the children gave their opinion about 3D perception during the performance on the VOL task by answering the statement "At certain moments, the objects came out of the screen" using a five-point Likert scale ranging from "(1) Strongly disagree" to "(5) Strongly agree." The questionnaires were adapted to children. The items of the questionnaires were filled in using text labels that were accompanied by graphical icons (Read, 2008).

We collected information about the satisfaction and usability perceived by the children by using two questionnaires with fivepoint Likert scale items. The satisfaction questionnaire was made up of four items: "How much fun did you have?" [response scale: "(1) None" to "(5) A lot"], "I would invite my friends to play the game" [response scale: "(1) Never" to "(5) Every day"], "Would you play this game another time?" [response scale: "(1) Never" to "(5) Every day"], and "Score the game from 1 to 5" [response scale: "(1) Very bad" to "(5) Very good"]. Finally, a usability questionnaire had two items: "Was the VOL task easy to play?" [response scale: "(1) Very difficult" to "(5) Very easy"], and "I always understood what I had to do" [response scale: "(1) Strongly disagree" to "(5) Strongly agree"].

# Spatial Ability Tests

We used two classical psychometric tests to assess the children's basic visuospatial abilities. We obtained an index of their visuospatial span with the forward version of the Corsi Block

Tapping Test (CBTT), and we used the backward version of the CBTT to collect a measure of their visuospatial working memory capacity (Kessels et al., 2000). We also assessed their visuospatial and visuomotor ability with the Block Construction subtest (BC) from the Nepsy-II battery (Korkman et al., 2014).

# Emotional and Behavioral Rating Scale

We used the Parent Report form of the Behavioral Assessment Scale for Children (PRfBASC) (Reynolds and Kamphaus, 2004) to assess their emotional and behavioral outcomes. PRfBASC is one of the most widely used behavior rating scales for the assessment of behavioral problems, emotional symptoms, and adjustment patterns in children across the following domains of functioning: Internalizing, Externalizing, and Adaptive Behavior. The PRfBASC consists of 130 items (3–6 years old) or 134 items (6–12 years old) about a child's behavior at home and in the community measured on a four-point Likert scale. In this study, we considered the following subscales of the PRfBASC:

delimits the peripheral area.

Anxiety, Depression, Hyperactivity, Aggressiveness, Withdrawal, and Attention Problems.

# Procedure

The participants were tested individually in sessions of approximately 55 min, which took place on the same day and between 9:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. They were randomly assigned to one of the following experimental conditions: Condition I and Condition II. In Condition I, the participants were tested with the Lang-Stereo-Test and then completed the questionnaire about videogame experience. Afterward, they performed the VOL task and then completed the questionnaires about 3D perception, satisfaction, and usability. Finally, they performed the CBTT and the BC. In Condition II, the participants performed the CBTT and the BC first and were then assessed with the remaining tests and questionnaires in the same order as described in Condition I. In the recruitment phase of the study (see section "Participants"), theparents completed the PRfBASC to obtain the emotional and behavioral measures. Before the child started, the child and his/her parents met the person responsible for the procedure, who accompanied the child during the whole session. The child and the experimenter talked for about 5 min, until the child felt comfortable with the situation. Then, the parents left the room and the session began.

# Data Analysis

We considered two variables that are related to the videogame experience questionnaire: (item 1) the child's previous experience in playing videogames, and (item 2) child's previous experience using the interaction method of the VOL task. We used the direct scores of these two items to calculate these variables. Similarly, we used the direct score of the 3D perception statement. For the satisfaction and usability questionnaires, we calculated the mean of the children's direct scores for each item of these two questionnaires in order to obtain a general measure of satisfaction and usability in performing the VOL task.

We considered five variables that are related to the performance of the VOL task: VOL Task Score, Total Distance, Total Time Average Speed, and Peripheral Distance. The VOL Task score is an indicator of visuospatial memory and involved the sum of the trials of the VOL task that were correctly performed (range: 0–4). The Total Time consists of the time (in seconds) taken to complete the four trials of the VOL task. The Total Distance is the total distance (in virtual meters) traveled by the child in the four trials of the VOL task. The Average Speed is an indicator of the velocity (in virtual meters/sec) with which the child explored the VE. We calculated this variable by dividing the Total Distance traveled by the Total Time spent to perform the task. The Peripheral Distance consists of the distance traveled by the child in the peripheral zone of the interaction area in the four trials of the VOL task. For the variables: Total Distance, Total Time, Average Speed, and Peripheral Distance, we also calculated the values obtained by the sum of each phase of the VOL task separately (learning and testing).

For the measures of the visuospatial ability, we used the direct scores of the CBTT (forward and backward versions) and BC. Finally, the scores of the subscales measured with the PRfBASC-2 (Anxiety, Depression, Hyperactivity, Aggressiveness, Withdrawal, and Attention Problems) are reported as T-scores (M = 50, SD = 10).

We applied the Shapiro–Wilk test (Shapiro and Wilk, 1965) to check the normality distribution of the dataset variables. This test is especially powerful for samples of small size. The tests showed that only the Anxiety variable followed a normal distribution. We decided to perform non-parametric tests with the entire data-set which are more suitable with distributions of this kind. All analyses were done using the free Software R-Studio (Version 0.98.1079). The results were considered to be statistically significant if p < 0.05.

# RESULTS

**Table 1** shows descriptive statistics for the five variables that are related to performance in the VOL task. In the case of time, speed, path length and peripheral path length, we present descriptive statistics for both the learning and testing phases of the VOL task. **Figure 5** shows the paths made by the children in the testing phases. **Table 1** also shows the descriptive statistics for the participants' experience in playing videogames and using the interaction method, their 3D perception during the VOL task, and their perceived satisfaction and usability. **Table 2** shows the descriptive statistics for the children's visuospatial abilities assessed with CBTT and CB, and their scores on the emotional and behavioral subscales of the PRfBASC-2.

# Effects of Age, Gender, and Previous Videogame Experience on Performance in the VOL Task

The task performance variables were analyzed using the Kruskal– Wallis test with four factors: Gender, Age, Experience in Videogames, and Interaction Method Experience. **Table 3** shows the results of the statistical analyses. The Kruskal–Wallis test

TABLE 1 | Mean scores (standard deviations) for the variables of the VOL task, videogame experience, 3D perception, satisfaction, and usability questionnaires (N = 52).

revealed a significant effect of Age group on the VOL Task Score. The older children had higher scores than the younger ones [χ 2 (2) = 15.8, p < 0.01]. A post hoc test showed significant differences between Age 5–6 and 7–9 (r = 0.49, p < 0.001), and between Age 5–6 and 10–12 (r = 0.84, p < 0.001). The test also indicated that the younger children spent more time completing the task [χ 2 (2) = 13.98, p < 0.01]. **Figure 6A** shows the influence of Gender and Age on the VOL Task Score. The gray and white boxes of the same age group are placed at the same height. The boxes are closer to the maximum score in the oldest group.

The Kruskal–Wallis tests also revealed that there was a significant effect of Age on the Total time spent to complete the task. The younger children required more time than the older ones [χ 2 (2) = 13.98, p < 0.01]. There are statistically significant differences related to the Gender factor. The girls spent more time than the boys to complete the task in all age groups (**Figure 6B**). This difference was especially high in the 5 to 6 year-old group. The girls in this group spent a mean of 16 min to complete the entire task.

To check if previous experience in videogames or previous experience with the interaction method influenced performance on the VOL task, we included these variables in the analyses. The Kruskal–Wallis tests show that only the average speed in the task is influenced by previous experience with videogames [χ 2 (4) = 12.25, p < 0.01]; the children who had more experience with videogames completed the task faster than those who did not have as much experience. Previous experience with the interaction method did not influence any of the variables considered (p > 0.05).

# Usability, Satisfaction, and 3D Perception

We performed one Kruskal–Wallis test for each VOL task measure of performance, using Usability, Satisfaction, and 3D perception as dependent variables. The results of these tests are shown in **Table 4**. The tests indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in the measures of the VOL task performance in relation to these variables. These results reflect that the users' perception of the task and the system did not influence the way users performed the task.

# Relationship Between Performance on the VOL Task and the Participant's Outcomes

To determine the relations between the different performance outcomes in the VOL task and the different scores obtained depending on videogame experience, perception of the VOL task, visuospatial ability, and emotional and behavioral variables, we performed a partial Spearman correlation extracting the influence of Age (**Table 5**).

Some displacement indicators in the VE showed significant correlations. There were significant direct correlations between the VOL task score and two variables of visuospatial abilities in small-scale real space: the visuospatial span backward (CBTT backward; Spearman's r = 0.29, p = 0.04), and blocks construction (BC; Spearman's r = 0.43, p < 0.01). Furthermore, there were relations between the Total Distance (Spearman's r = −0.27, p = 0.04) and Peripheral Distance (Spearman's r = −0.31, p = 0.03) with the CBTT forward score. We also found that with for those with less experience with gamepads, the completion time for the VOL task was longer (Spearman's r = −0.29, p = 0.04).

There were significant direct correlations between the Average Speed of navigation in the VE and experience with the gamepad interaction (Spearman's r = 0.30, p = 0.03). The same type of meaningful relationship was found between Average Speed and the score on the Aggressiveness subscale (Spearman's r = 0.30, p = 0.04). Longer navigation paths were related to higher scores on the Withdrawal (Spearman's r = 0.31, p = 0.03) and Attention Problem subscales (Spearman's r = 0.32, p = 0.02). In addition, longer navigation paths in the peripheral area of the VE were related to higher scores on the Withdrawal subscale (Spearman's r = 0.31, p = 0.03). Shorter path lengths in both the whole interaction area and in the peripheral area of the VE were related to higher visuospatial span scores measured with the CBTT forward (Spearman's r = −0.31, p = 0.03).

# DISCUSSION

We studied the performance of typically-developing boys and girls in a VE that was designed to test short-term memory for the location of objects placed in specific places in a city square (i.e., the VOL task). The VE worked as an open field, which included proximal and distal cues that are common in a city. The area of interaction was divided into two areas (i.e., central and peripheral). The VE was actively explored using a gamepad.

We considered participants' age, gender, and previous videogame experience as potential variables that could influence success on the VOL task and the way of exploring the VE. We also examined relationships among the variables in performance on the VOL task and visuospatial, emotional, and behavioral outcomes.

The children's performance on the VOL task and their visuospatial skills correlated. The task also obtained high values of usability and satisfaction by the children. Hence, we considered that the task was appropriate for studying the spatial performance in a child population without disabilities.

As we hypothesized, the participants' age affected their performance on the VOL task. The task involved the retrieval of short-term memories of three visuospatial items. Also, the proximal and distal cues were important for orientation. The children could not use a strategy based on routes since their point-of-view position was rotated between the learning and testing phases. Their success was dependent on the creation and use of a mental map of the city square and/or links between the target and its surrounding cues. The lower scores of the youngest participants suggest that their visuospatial short-term memory and/or their spatial strategies were relatively weaker during this developmental period. This result is consistent with previous studies (Bullens et al., 2010; Purser et al., 2012; Nys et al., 2015; Mendez-Lopez et al., 2016; Merrill et al., 2016) and with the results found by Rodríguez-Andrés et al. (2016). They performed descriptive analyses taking into account the age of the

participants and the VOL task score. They found a trend toward a better score on the task by the older children than the younger ones.

Age and gender also affected the total time spent on the task. This time was especially longer in the youngest group studied and was related to gender differences found in navigation

TABLE 2 | Mean scores (standard deviations) for the spatial ability tests and the subscales of the Parent Report form of the BASC-2 used in the study (N = 52).

CBTT, Corsi Block Tapping Test; BC, Block Construction subtest from the Nepsy-II; PRfBASC, Parent Report form of the Behavioral Assessment Scale for Children.

TABLE 3 | The results of the Kruskal–Wallis tests for the variables related to the performance of the VOL task.

The tests that reached significance are displayed in bold type.

speed (**Figure 6C**) and amount of previous experience with videogames. Children who played videogames frequently were found to navigate with greater speed, precision, and agility. The amount of experience with technological devices increases with the age (Sayers, 2004). Also, girls play videogames less frequently (Terlecki and Newcombe, 2005). Interestingly, experience with playing videogames influenced only performance variables that reflected the way in which the participant explored the VE but did not affect the score obtained. The VOL score was a measure of the visuospatial abilities of the children based on the correlations found between this outcome and the score obtained on the paper–pencil spatial tests. This result suggests that being less skilled in videogames does not influence the visuospatial ability of the user obtained in a virtual spatial task, but it does influence the speed of exploration of the VE.

Familiarity with the interaction method used in the VOL task did not impair how the way the children explored the space; however, there was a trend toward a lower ability to locate the objects by the less experienced participants. Also, those more skilled with the gamepad were faster in the completion of the task and the navigation of the VE, but the strength of the correlation was weak. Our sample was not very familiar with the gamepad overall. The gamepad was the preferred device of interaction by children from 5 to 10 years old when compared with a device based on a natural user interface in a previous study (Rodríguez-Andrés et al., 2016). As noted by the mean score, our participants had played with a gamepad occasionally, but their frequency of use was less than once a week. Based on our informal notes, they played more frequently using touch-based interfaces in mobile devices, including tablets. We gave them training to reduce the possibility of differences in experience-based performance (Sandamas et al., 2009). The VOL task included two phases for practice with the interface (i.e., adaptation and tutorial). The first one involved practicing in a VE which was more difficult to explore than the VE of the learning trials. The VE of the adaptation phase required strong fine motor skills. These two phases gave the users training in the procedural aspects of the virtual navigation. In this way, we attempted to reduce any potential bias due to experiential factors in the interpretation of children's ability to locate objects.

The children's perception of the task experience and with overall system was very positive, especially for its usability aspects. The children gave a score close to maximum on the usability questionnaire; he means were 4 on a scale from 1 to 5. This result shows that the task was easy for them to perform. Three reasons for the high usability level include (1) the procedure aimed to facilitate the familiarity and comprehension of task phases, (2) the users were habituated to the interaction system prior to being tested, and (3) the children appreciated the innovative nature of the system. For example, the 120-inch stereoscopic screen, wearing polarized glasses, and the sense of immersion in the virtual city were novelties for most if not all of the children (Wells et al., 2010). However, we suggest that novelty alone is unlikely to influence the positive scores. If that were the case, the children would have given the maximum score on the satisfaction and 3D perception questionnaires. All of the children had stereoptic vision, but their 3D perception was not highly

TABLE 4 | Multifactorial Kruskal–Wallis tests for the Usability, Satisfaction, and 3D Perception variables.

positive considering their mean rating of the experience (3.56 out of a maximum of 5). Similarly, the children were satisfied with the task, but some aspects of the task might have increased the perceived satisfaction more than others. The task provided motivating feedback after the completion of each trial regardless of the quality of execution. This was to prevent any frustration that might have been caused by a feeling of inadequacy and to keep the children engaged throughout the task. Despite this, the children gave the task a relatively high score (3.39 out of 5).

As we mentioned above, boys were more skilled than girls in the exploring the VE. However, contrary to what we expected, boys did not outperform girls in their ability to locate the virtual objects. The similar performance between boys and girls was also found in several studies in which children were trained in a navigational short-term memory task (Juan et al., 2014; León et al., 2014; Piccardi et al., 2014; Mendez-Lopez et al., 2016). Also, Rodríguez-Andrés et al. (2016) did not find significant differences between 5 and 10-year old boys and girls in their ability to locate the objects in the task. They performed similarly regardless of the type of interaction used (i.e., natural interaction or gamepad). The level of difficulty of the VOL task was low in terms of its VE and the memory load required. The spatial layout of the VE had proximal and distal cues guiding orientation. All of these cues could be seen from any viewpoint of the interaction area by the rotation of the VE during the exploration. In addition, the task requirement was to store three spatial locations temporarily that had been sequentially presented. The results agree with those of León et al. (2014) who suggested that gender differences emerge only in spatial tasks that are more challenging.

We found significant correlations between task performance and children's visuospatial abilities in some paper and pencil spatial tests. The moderate strength of the correlation found between the VOL score and the score on the BC subtest indicates that the success in object location in our task is related to the general ability to calculate position and directionality (Korkman et al., 2014). It is also related to spatial working memory, but to a lesser extent as indicated by the weak correlation found between the VOL score and the score on the CBTT backward subtest. High scores on this subtest reveal good skill in holding in mind and manipulating a large number of visuospatial items (Kessels et al., 2000). We suggest that the mental manipulation of spatial representations is a key factor in solving our virtual task because there was no correlation with the simple ability to maintain spatial information in short-term memory. This supports the relevance of executive functions in working memory tasks involving spatial relations (Purser et al., 2012; Korthauer et al., 2017). It is also interesting to note that those participants with lower spatial spans executed longer path lengths in the VE, but the strength of the correlation was weak. The spatial span measure is affected by attentional capacity (Kessels et al., 2000), thus the result could also be interpreted as reflecting the relation

#### TABLE 5 | Partial Spearman correlations (N = 52).

fpsyg-09-00451 March 30, 2018 Time: 16:18 # 11

CBTT, Corsi Block Tapping Test; BC, Block Construction subtest from the Nepsy-II. The correlation coefficients that reached significance are displayed in bold type.

between execution of longer paths and increased attentional difficulties. Those children that are more prone to distraction might be less able to navigate efficiently to a spatial target. Thus, the level of the participants' attentional capacity could be an important factor to be considered in spatial task performance, as discussed by Farran et al. (2015).

Contrary to what we expected, we did not find correlations between anxiety measures and displacements within the peripheral area of the VE. We propose three possible explanations for this result: (1) the children scored within the normal limits in all emotional and behavioral outcomes considered, whereas previous studies were conducted using samples with clinical symptoms (Mueller et al., 2009; Burles et al., 2014), (2) our VE was emotionally neutral, and we gave children the optimal conditions to reduce anxiety regarding the testing situation (i.e., an initial familiarization with the experimenter and positive reinforcement during the task), and (3) our VE target items were all in the same space. A more complex environment with several spaces that are not accessible at first sight might be more prone to reveal significant correlations with anxious behavioral traits.

Nevertheless, withdrawal behaviors were related to an increase in the exploratory behaviors in our sample, but they did not affect spatial learning or the time spent on the task. It might be suggested that the children withdraw made an intense exploration of the VE in order to achieve a good spatial representation. Fornasari et al. (2013) found an effect of withdrawal on the exploration of a virtual city. Contrary to what we found, this behavior was related to a reduction in the exploration of the VE, but the differences between these results could be explained by the populations studied. In the case of Fornasari et al. (2013), they studied a clinical population of children with autism. Based on levels of withdrawal within the normal limits, we can speculate that withdrawal might have a negative impact on social outdoor games. This result partially supported the relevance of previous experiences in spatial behaviors proposed by other authors (e.g., Lawton and Kallai, 2002).

Finally, those children who are more prone to aggressive behaviors navigated the VE faster, but there was no significant correlation with time savings. This result is in line with studies confirming that the feeling of anger predicts faster motor behavior (e.g., Deffenbacher et al., 2003; Roidl et al., 2014).

The present research has some limitations. First, our task tests spatial short-term memory learning for three locations in a VE that works like an open field. The level of difficulty is low. It would have been interesting to compare results with those obtained in a task that was more difficult and a VE that was more complex. The second problem is related to the sample. It would have been desirable to increase the number of participants in each age group, especially in the youngest group.

The VOL task presents a VE in which participants use their navigational competencies and their spatial short-term memory for the location of objects. The key factor in an object-location task is the possibility to mentally represent a spatial configuration of interrelated objects. We used three objects because previous research has tested adults in spatial tasks with three or four objects (Zimmer et al., 2003; Iachini et al., 2009), and, from 5 years of age, a person is able to recall the location of 2–3 objects (Mendez-Lopez et al., 2016). The VOL task is attractive for children and is also challenging for adults. We considered that this is a positive aspect of this task because the VOL task provides an opportunity to increase knowledge about spatial memory and navigation and to directly compare these skills in participants of all ages. However, this aspect also puts us at a disadvantage in determining the effects of individual factors in spatial performance. If the task had incorporated more objects

that would make it more difficult to perform, there might have been gender effects in favor of the boys. As we have discussed above, the difficulty of a spatial task is a key factor in the existence of gender differences (León et al., 2014). Also, we hypothesize that an increase in the number of objects to recall would have negatively affected the scores on satisfaction and usability given by the younger children because it would be very difficult for them to perform it. In addition, their exploratory behavior would have been more prone to reveal significant correlations with anxiety or withdrawal behaviors.

# CONCLUSION

Age affected the spatial short-term memory for the location of three objects in a virtual city in children between the ages of 5 and 12 years. Three factors contributed positively to improving the accuracy of the children's performance during the navigation: age, being male, and having more experience with videogames. There were weak associations among variables which showed that the individual differences in visuospatial skills correlated mainly with the ability to recall objects' positions. Behavioral and emotional variables were not related to object location memory. However, three variables were associated with differences in the exploration of the VE, namely: levels of attention, aggressiveness, and withdrawal.

# REFERENCES

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

DR-A, MM-L, M-CJ, and EP-H: conceived, designed, and performed the experiments, interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. DR-A and MM-L: analyzed the data.

# FUNDING