Almost being there: video communication with young children

This dissertation explores the popularity and experience of video communication by pre-school-aged children. Two questionnaires verified that young children frequently engage in video communication with relatives; and that parents largely perceive this activity as beneficial. Three behavioural experiments, utilizing variations of a separation and reunion procedure, investigated how young children behave during a video-link to their parent. Findings demonstrated that children feel proximal a parent during a virtual parental presence, as if the parent was actually present, which attenuated typical separation behaviours, illustrating that young children can experience parental virtual presence as 'almost being there.'