Preschoolers' Media Sign Literacy: Empirical Studies on Training Programs, Knowledge Acquisition, and Emotional Inferences

Children should be taught the proper handling of media at an early age, as media are omnipresent in today's world and cannot be avoided (Kieninger et al., 2024). Since media literacy is not innate but must be learned through media exposure (e.g., Potter, 2021), it is advisable to actively promote this skill starting in preschool. Media sign literacy (MSL) is the most fundamental aspect of media literacy developing at preschool age and focusing on the understanding and correct use of the signs and symbol systems that organize media (Nieding & Ohler, 2008). Research shows that MSL increases with age (Nieding et al., 2017) and that the media literacy of older children and adults can be improved through interventions (e.g., Jeong et al., 2012). Therefore, it was assumed that this also applies to preschoolers, although this has not yet been examined. Based on this research foundation, a training program to promote MSL in preschool children was developed. This training and the effects of normally developed and promoted MSL on various facets of children's media exposure were examined in this doctoral thesis. In more detail, the studies in this doctoral thesis provide three research questions regarding preschoolers’ MSL. First, it was assumed that MSL should be significantly improved through a specific training program, and further should have a significant impact on academic precursors. Further the thesis investigated preschoolers handling of entertaining and education media and the impact MSL has on both kinds of media exposure. Previous research showed that children with high levels of MSL perform better in acquiring knowledge from educational media (Diergarten et al., 2017). Therefore, the second research question investigated whether children with trained MSL show better knowledge acquisition from educational films and audiobooks than children without a training. Furthermore, the thesis uses the example of emotional inferences to investigate MSLs impact on preschoolers’ story comprehension. Emotional inferences are a crucial part of story comprehension and MSL has been found to impact children’s ability before (Diergarten & Nieding, 2015). In this thesis the third research question investigated even younger childrens’ drawing of emotional inferences and MSLs impact on it. Three studies were conducted to investigate these research questions. In the first study (Hunze et al., 2025), a pre-/post-test design was used to investigate whether MSL can be promoted through the targeted self-developed training and how this promotion affects various academic precursors. The experimental group was compared with an active control group that completed a classic intelligence training, as intelligence has been found to be a relevant covariate before and shares a common variance with MSL (Nieding et al., 2017). A passive control group continued their normal preschool routine without any training during the intervention phase of the study. Both trainings were tablet-based and conducted over approximately four weeks with four- to five-year-old children (nexperimental = 49; nactiv = 53; npassiv = 50) in preschool. The results showed that children who completed the MSL training performed better in MSL tasks than children who completed the intelligence training or no training. Children who completed the MSL training also scored highest on a non-verbal, figurative intelligence test. Furthermore, both the experimental and active control groups showed higher letter knowledge after the training compared to the passive control group. The intelligence training, in turn, best improved the children's phonological awareness and verbal intelligence. In the second study (Hunze et al., 2024), the impact of the self-developed MSL training on the knowledge acquisition from educational media was examined. Preschoolers either participated in the training (nexperimental = 73) or did not (ncontrol = 71). Subsequently, the children watched a clip of an educational television program, listened to a clip of an educational audiobook, and answered recognition and inference questions about the respective clips. As expected, the results of the study showed that children who completed the MSL training performed better on inference questions regarding the film and audiobook, as well as on recognition tasks for the film, but not for the audiobook. The study also replicated the results of a previous study (Diergarten et al., 2017), once again demonstrating that the MSL baseline score (before the training) is a significant predictor of the knowledge acquisition from educational television programs. In Study 3 (Hunze et al., 2024), it was investigated whether four-year-old children are already able to draw inferences about the emotional state of a film protagonist. Further, the impact of MSL on this ability was examined. For this purpose, 59 children (n4-year-olds = 28; n5-years-olds = 31) watched clips of an unfamiliar television series embedded in a reaction time task. The four-year-olds did not differ in their performance from the older children. Both age groups were only able to draw valence-based inferences (i.e., distinguishing between emotions of different valences) but not exact inferences (i.e., distinguishing between emotions of the same valence). Various influencing factors on the generation of emotional inferences were also examined. Unlike a previous study with older children (Diergarten & Nieding, 2015), MSL had no relevant influence. The childrens’ theory of mind was also not relevant. However, the general understanding of the film scenes was an important predictor for drawing inferences.