Abstract: Employing representation understanding task and rule learning task to investigate the effect of parasocial interaction on 2-5 years old children’s learning from video, young children’s performances were compared among three conditions: social interaction live condition, parasocial interaction video condition and non-parasocial interaction video condition. Results from the representation understanding task indicated that a video deficit phenomenon occurred in 2 year old children’s learning from video; After age 2.5, especially for 3-4 years old children, the performance under parasocial interaction video condition was the same as under social interaction live condition，it implied that parasocial interaction enhanced young children’s participation, and effectively improved children's attention to the video information, thus it contributed to young children's use of video information to solve problems. Under the non-parasocial interaction video condition, the performance of 3 to 4 years old age groups not only did not rise, but declined compared to the performance of 2.5 years old age group, and the performance were significantly lower than the performance under parasocial interaction video condition. Children after 3 years of age, along with the development of self-awareness and self-esteem, their participation and learning might be inhibited under the non-parasocial interaction video condition. Results from the rule learning task indicated that for 2.5 years old age groups, performances were poor under all three conditions due to the limitation of children's cognitive development. For children aged 3 to 4 years old, their performances steadily increased under parasocial interactive video condition and social interaction live condition, and were significantly high compared with non-parasocial interaction video condition. It implied that children’s ability to understand the rules developed rapidly, and learning under parasocial interactive video condition were better than under non-parasocial interaction video condition. For children age 4.5 and above, performances under non-parasocial interactive video condition were greatly improved, because children’s ability of attention and initiative to learning developed rapidly. The prominent role of parasocial interaction in video learning therefore was reduced. Based on the results, the authors concluded that age from 2.5 to 4.5 is the best period for effective parasocial interactive video learning. The authors put forward a suggestion about producing video programs for 2 to 5 years old children that parasocial interaction cues should be considered appropriately in the programs.

Key words: parasocial interaction, learning from video, video deficit, young children.

摘要： 本研究采用表征理解任务和规则学习任务，通过比较真人互动、视频拟互动和视频非互动三种条件下年幼儿童的学习效果，考察拟互动在2-5岁儿童视频学习中的作用。结果表明，2岁儿童的视频学习存在视频缺陷现象，2.5岁到5岁儿童的拟社会互动视频学习效果明显，优于非互动视频学习，与真人互动学习相当。2.5岁至4.5岁是拟互动视频学习的最佳年龄。

关键词: 拟社会互动, 视频学习, 视频缺陷, 年幼儿童