Abstract The aim of this study is to evaluate how young children use and interact with mobile applications by observing the reactions and behaviour of four-year-old children while interacting with fifteen educational apps. A multimodal non-intrusive research procedure was applied to twelve participants in a kindergarten in Brazil. Structured observations and qualitative fieldnotes were employed to assess game understanding and achievement, emotions, level of involvement, private speech and speech to the researcher through the child's facial expressions, behaviour and verbalizations. Principal Component Analysis exposes three dimensions of young children's interactions with educational apps: game access, active engagement with the activities, and the social speech that is generated from playing the game. The field notes also alowed specific app features to be identified that may complicate or support the children's interactions. The study offers an operational definition of children's interactions with digital devices in educational contexts that could support the future evidence-based design and an assessment of digital resources for effective game-based learning in early childhood.

中文翻译：

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幼儿与教育应用互动的情绪、私人言论、参与和其他方面

摘要 本研究的目的是通过观察 4 岁儿童在与 15 个教育应用程序交互时的反应和行为来评估幼儿如何使用和与移动应用程序交互。对巴西一所幼儿园的 12 名参与者应用了多模式非侵入性研究程序。采用结构化观察和定性现场笔记来评估游戏理解和成就、情绪、参与程度、私人演讲和通过儿童的面部表情、行为和语言表达对研究人员的演讲。主成分分析揭示了幼儿与教育应用互动的三个维度：游戏访问、活动的积极参与以及玩游戏产生的社交言论。现场笔记还允许识别特定的应用程序功能，这些功能可能会使儿童的互动复杂化或支持他们的互动。该研究提供了儿童在教育环境中与数字设备交互的操作定义，可以支持未来的循证设计和数字资源评估，以实现有效的幼儿游戏学习。