Examines how emotional content in televised messages intensifies physiological attentional responses. Explains that heart rate data indicating both shorter-term responses and longer-term arousal were collected from 10 female and 4 male advertising students. Finds that emotional content increases physiological arousal in viewers and that heart…

Investigates whether audio/video redundancy improves memory for television messages. Suggests a theoretical framework for classifying previous work and reinterpreting the results. Suggests general support for the notion that redundancy levels affect the capacity requirements of the message, which impact differentially on audio or visual…

The purpose of this study is to integrate categorical and dimensional approaches to emotion and examine both the effects of emotional type and of the emotional dimensions of valence and arousal on memory for television messages. Subjects, 105 freshmen and sophomore communication students at a Western university participating in the experiment for…

To test the hypothesis that news stories written in chronological order are remembered better than news stories written in typical broadcast format, a study used a mixed model factorial design to examine factors of style (traditional or chronological), subject (content of news story), and order (placement of the story within the newscast). Two…

This study found that violent or horrible images in news stories increased attention, amount of capacity required to process a message, and ability to retrieve a story; facilitated recognition of information presented during a video; inhibited recognition for information presented before; and indicated that negative images increased the…

Describes a study of undergraduates that was designed to assess the independent and interactive effects of emotional arousal and emotional valence on viewers' cognitive capacity and memory for television messages. Highlights include emotional processing and memory, emotion and cognitive capacity, pretests and posttests, and hypotheses tested.…

Finds that, among college students, (1) both related and unrelated cuts resulted in cardiac orienting responses; (2) processing unrelated cuts required more capacity than processing related cuts; and (3) memory was better for information presented after related cuts, with this effect greater for visual memory than for audio memory. (SR)

Outlines a psychophysiological (involuntary responses to novel environmental stimuli) model of the role of orienting responses (ORs) in learning from televised lectures. Demonstrates that insertion of videographics in talking-head lectures produces ORs in television viewers. Finds that ORs enhance learning of familiar material but interfere with…

Investigates whether memory for positive and negative television messages differs in the amount of verbal and visual-spatial information recognized and recalled by television viewers, as a function of differential activation of the brain hemispheres elicited by emotional messages. Suggests that message valence may be related to the amount of…

Finds that elaborated audio narrative structure increased resources allocated to a message and memory for the message; increased video narrative structure did not influence resource allocation but did increase memory; and messages were recalled in narrative form regardless of the narrative structure of the message. (SR)

A field experiment tested the effects of mediation, message difficulty and gender of message presenter on children's attention to messages. Seventy-seven children, ages 6 weeks to 5 years participated in the study. Children were observed as they watched messages delivered by a person either in real life or on television. Results indicated that…

Examines psychophysiological and cognitive processing of television events to see what kinds of contextual information might be stored as a result of both real and fictional television events and mediated and unmediated television events. Examines decision processes that use this information. Suggests that television may result in contextual…

This study investigates how game playing experience changes when a story is added to a first-person shooter game. Dependent variables include identification, presence, emotional experiences and motivations. When story was present, game players felt greater identification, sense of presence, and physiological arousal. The presence of story did not…

The Theory and Methodology Division of the proceedings contains the following 16 papers: "The Deep Audit as an Epistemology for the Watchdog: Computer-assisted Reporting and Investigative Journalism" (John E. Newhagen); "Race and Class in 1980s Hollywood" (Chris Jordan); "The Impact of Website Campaigning on Traditional…

Examines differences between the formal features of commercial versus noncommercial Web sites, and the relationship between Web page complexity and amount of traffic a site receives. Findings indicate that, although most pages in this stage of the Web's development remain technologically simple and noninteractive, there are significant…