Interacting with your children is one of the best parts of being a parent and it's no surprise that many people report looking for toys this
holiday season that incorporate interactive technology. Are you one of them? If you are, then you know you're looking for the kind of technology
that involves you and engages, motivates, teaches, surprises and sparks the imagination of your child.
The benets of this interaction are considerable.
Interaction key to helping develop children's minds
Responsive interactions are the key to a toddler's ability to increase their vocabulary and a baby's ability to learn language, according to a study
by the Society for Research in Child Development. Researchers at the University of Washington, Temple University and the University of
Delaware studied 2-year-olds who effectively learned new verbs, either through training face-to-face with a person or via live video chat
technology such as Skype. The study found children learned new words only when conversing with a person live or in the video chat, both of which
involve responsive social interactions. These ndings highlight the importance of a more interactive and responsive approach to learning
language.
One creative, technology "toy" that's being introduced this year to support these ndings is Chappet, a 2-inch, round yellow speaker button that's
controlled by a smartphone app. Chappet allows parents or caregivers to interact with a child through a stuffed animal that adorns the button by
supplying their own voice via voice or text chat. Chappet can also support more than 1,000 prerecorded phrases, features 20 prerecorded songs
and stories and its auto chat function can mimic the words a child shares with it in conversation, allowing children to interact with their toys in
an entirely new way.