This review looks at how artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in early educational settings to support young children’s development. We found a small but growing body of studies using AI-based activities such as speech recognition systems, robots, adaptive learning programs, extended reality tools, and chatbots. Some studies reported positive findings for children’s language, literacy, cognitive, social, emotional, and fine motor development. However, the evidence is still limited, and the studies varied widely in design, quality, and outcomes measured. This review also explored whether AI could help researchers with data extraction, which is a labour-intensive part of the systematic review process. The AI-assisted workflow showed strong agreement with human extraction, but it should be viewed as a support rather than a replacement for human reviewers.
