Understanding Preschoolers’ Learning from Socially Contingent Video Chat: Effects of Contextual, Child, and Design Factors

Synchronous video chat enables socially contingent interaction and is increasingly used with young children, yet evidence for its effectiveness is mixed. Prior research has examined media use context, child characteristics, or media design features in isolation, and instructional interaction within video chat has rarely been examined. This study integrated these factors to examine preschoolers’ learning from shared book reading via video chat, focusing on instructional interaction type (questions vs. statements), vocabulary skill, repetition, and content type (targeted word recall vs. non-targeted location recall). Eighty-four children aged 3–5 years completed two readings of the same story with an adult experimenter via video chat, followed by word recall (targeted) and location recall (non-targeted) tasks. Questions enhanced word recall, and this effect did not vary by age, vocabulary skill, or repetition. For location recall, children with lower vocabulary skill benefited from questions, whereas those with higher vocabulary skill did not. Repetition improved word recall but not location recall. These findings identify questions as an effective instructional interaction for targeted learning from synchronous video chat, whereas benefits for non-targeted content depend on vocabulary skill. Together, the results highlight the importance of considering contextual, child, and design factors in socially contingent video chat.