Disentangling the effects of video pace and story realism on children’s attention and response inhibition

This study examined the influence of the realism (realistic vs. unrealistic) and pace (slow vs. fast), in a video of an actor reading a story, on 4-year-old children’s attention and response inhibition. After establishing baseline cognitive performance, 187 children watched novel videos that manipulated realism and pace, while keeping other programme features constant. Irrespective of the pace, watching the videos which presented unrealistic stories improved children’s response inhibition. For attention, there was an interaction between pace and realism. Exposure to the fast-paced video resulted in faster responding, but only when the story was realistic. Together the results suggest that a story’s realism, rather than the video’s pace, affects the inhibitory component of children’s executive function; whereas both pace and realism interact to affect attention. We propose that certain types of feature, embedded in a video, can provide a buffer against the negative effects of exposure to fast pace.