Baby FaceTime: can toddlers learn from online video chat?

There is abundant evidence for the ‘video deficit’: children under 2 years old learn better in person than from video. We evaluated whether these findings applied to video chat by testing whether children aged 12–25 months could form relationships with and learn from on‐screen partners. We manipulated social contingency: children experienced either real‐time FaceTime conversations or pre‐recorded Videos as the partner taught novel words, actions and patterns. Children were attentive and responsive in both conditions, but only children in the FaceTime group responded to the partner in a temporally synced manner. After one week, children in the FaceTime condition (but not the Video condition) preferred and recognized their Partner, learned more novel patterns, and the oldest children learned more novel words. Results extend previous studies to demonstrate that children under 2 years show social and cognitive learning from video chat because it retains social contingency. A video of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/rTXaAYd5adA Children ages 22‐25 months learned novel words from interactive video chat, but not from pre‐recorded videos. Also, beginning at 17 months of age, children recognized someone they had previously only ‘met’ via video chat. Social contingency enables learning from video chat for children under 2 years old.