Effect of presentation mode on recall of news infromation Essays

Effect of presentation mode on recall of news infromation Essays Effect of presentation mode on recall of news infromation Essay Effect of presentation mode on recall of news infromation Essay A media comparison study was conducted to compare undergraduates recall of news information presented in three different conditions; to establish which form of medium is most effective in conveying information. A sample of 93 psychology undergraduates were presented with a series of violent and non violent new stories; either audio-visually, in audio or in print. Immediately after presentation, subjects were tested for cued recall of story content. Significant result of presentation medium and content type was found. As predicted recall of information was best in the print and was worst in the audio condition. Overall violent content was recalled better than non-violent content, especially in the audio-only and print modes. Statistical results indicate that reading the news produces a much more effective retention of information than listening or watching the news. This also confirms previous findings on adults that recall of material presented in print medium is superior to that from radio or television presentation. Therefore results have implications for future presentation of news information It has always been part of human nature to obtain information about the world surrounding it and the people within it from some kind of source. In the past, it was often family or the church (religion) that provided information to the people. In modern society, however, we have various sources that provide us with the required information. The main ones include the radio, newspaper, magazines and the internet; however with the wide spread of technological advances television has become predominately the main source of information. In particularly when providing people with knowledge about what is currently happening in the world (current affairs). In public opinion surveys, people frequently claim television as their most important source of news information. The provision of news is also regarded as one of the key functions of television and as one of its major source of gratification for viewers. Despite the fact that many people claim that they refer to television for much of their news information, and that they learn a great deal from television bulletins. Research with broadcast news has shown that When subjects are tested immediately after presentation of news bulletins content; viewers and listeners frequently fail to remember very much from specific news programmes. There are many factors that lie within the audience that can account for the lack of retention, such as attention, motivation and background knowledge relating to the news content. Recently, researchers are becoming increasingly aware of the various presentation factors that can have significant effect on learning. The main question that arises out of this particular research is whether conveying important information via television medium compares favourably or unfavourably with either print or radio medium. The visual images of television are often said to set television news apart from other news media. The pictures, color, and motion help to make televisions portrayal of events quite real (Graber, 1988). As Ron Nessen, Press Secretary for President Gerald Ford, once said that Television is reality if it hasnt happened on television, it hasnt happened (Gunter, 1987). This element of reality associated with television pictures enhances the credibility of news reports. The majority of the public has come to rely heavily on television as their primary source of news and deems it more believable than radio, newspapers, and magazines. In America television was identified as a news source by 65% of the population in a recent national survey, compared to only 42% who mentioned newspapers, 14% radio, 4% magazines, and 5% other people. It was also discovered that if there were conflicting reports of the same story, television stories would be most believed by 49% of respondents, whereas 26% would believe newspapers, 7% radio, and 5% magazines (Stanley and Niemi, 1990). The ability to view events and to judge them for oneself through the visual images of television helps to make television believable. But does that mean that television visuals help people to learn and recall information presented better in comparison to other mediums?. Recently researchers have demonstrated considerable differences in the perception of actors as a function of the channel of communication. When comparing learning from print and television presentation of the same material, results have indicated that learning may be better from print. Therefore contradicting the publics subjective view that they learn a great deal more from television than print. In William, Paul and Ogilvie (1975) study , television, radio and print conditions of presentation were compared, it was found that there was significantly better memory performance for material from television than from radio, and with radio been significantly better than print. However, a more recent study, by Wilson (1974) in which these three mediums were compared it was found that retention was much better in the print condition than television or radio. One reason to explain the reverse of these results may be due to the difference in the tests employed by the researchers. In William et al. study they used the recognition method, whereas Wilson used the free recall method. It is possible that free recall performance is better after a print presentation than television; this may be because reading requires more cognitive effort and facilitates greater depth of information processing than television viewing. There are potential advantages that are gained when using any of these three media. The major advantage of using print over television and radio is that the reader has the opportunity to consume news at their own pace, unlike broadcasted news where the pace of presentation is determined by producers. Another learning advantage that is thought to exist when information is presented in print and to some extent in radio is that the reader or listener has the ability to produce his/her own images from the presented information. Whereas with television viewers they are already supplied with ready-made images, and therefore they may not be able to undergo this cognitive processing while viewing television. Additional processing advantage of learning material from print or radio is that they require less focused attention compared to when viewing television. Viewers observing television not only have to focus on the image to understand what is happening but also at the same time attend to t he information that is been narrated. Visual images are know to improve memory, but only if they are relevant to the message been portrayed otherwise they can interfere with learning. Gunter (1979) found that free recall was much better for brief headline items when the pictures presented with it were still pictures. Gunter (1980) also found that the presence of slightly irrelevant film accompaniment on TV news stories can interfere to a certain degree with retention of the narrative content. This evidence clearly validates the above point that images can interfere with recall. Beside the medium presentation, the nature of story content may also affect learning. Kleinsmith and Kaplan (1964) revealed that memory may be relatively impeded when the test material is highly arousing but is relatively much better for non-arousing content. Cohen, Wigand and Harrison reported that young viewers had a better recall for violent items judged to be emotional than items judged to be neutral. This clearly reveals that memory for different types of story content does vary, especially according to the channel of presentation. Recently Gunter, Furnham and Gieston (1984) explored memory for the news as a function of the channel of communication. The experiment intended to report the effect of medium presentation and its relation with story type on memory for news material. In the experiment subjects were presented with a sequence of violent and non-violent news stories either audio-visually, in audio only or in print. Subjects were tested for cued recall of story content immediately after presentation. Results showed that recall of story content was best following the print presentation and worst for radio presentation. Violent content was recalled better than non-violent content, and significantly so in the audio-only and print modes. It was found that males had a higher recall level than females; however in the present study such comparison would not be made. The focus of the present study is to compare learning and memory recall from television, print and radio conditions of presentation, as a result shedding more light on the effects of medium presentation and of its interaction with story type (violent versus non-violent) on memory for news material. Therefore directly replicating the experiment of Gunter, Furnham and Gieston (1984). The three different conditions of news presentation (television, radio and print) are the independent variables. The dependent variable is the memory performance of each condition which was measured via a questionnaire test requiring free recall of information presented. From previous findings of Gunter, Furnham and Gieston (1984) research established that memory performance was best following print presentation of the news narrative, and worst for radio presentation. Their study also established that violent news were remember far better than non-violent, which is what this study also aims to demonstrate. As a result, the present study hypothesises that memory performance would be much better in the print condition, followed by the television condition and the worst performance been in the radio condition. Therefore hypothesising as Gunter, Furnham and Gieston (1984) research concluded. Subjects Ninety three male and female psychology undergraduates between the ages of 18-45 from the university college London participated in this experiment as part of a course fulfilment. 26 were randomly assigned to receive information in print (print mod), 34 to receive information audio-visually (television mode) and 33 to receive information through the radio (radio mode). Each subject in the visual condition was assumed to have a normal or corrected to normal vision and subjects assigned to the audio only condition were also assumed to have normal hearing. Design and material Subjects were assigned randomly and independently to each of the three conditions with the limitation that each group should contain approximately equal number of participants. The news information presented consisted of four news stories with each one lasting approximately one minute. The information provided had been originally pre-recorded from TV news bulletins months before the experiment. The items had been recorded from transmissions put out by an experimental TV service and had not been previously shown in normal network TV Bulletins in the UK. The items presented were all common in format, with each one consisting of a film report with a narrative voiceover. Two of the items contained violent events, which included scenes of street clashes between rioters and the police in El Salvador and the other in South Korea. The other two items contained non-violent events, one about the lifting of trade restrictions by Japan and the other about a visit to Yugoslavia by the Greek prime minister. The film footage from El Salvador was made of individuals crouching behind barricades with hand-guns shooting at others across the street; in the mean time the narrator described the reason for the rioting. Meanwhile footage from South Korea was of rioters throwing rocks and stones at the police and in return the police are clubbing any captured demonstrator. The story was mainly concerned with the reasons for rioting and how this related to the dissatisfaction of the government with certain sections of the public. Film footage of the Japans trade restrictions depicted of delegates arriving and settling down into a meeting concerning this and other Versailles matters. The item from Yugoslavia was made of scenes from the visit of the Greek prime minister and the narrator spoke of reasons for the visit. In the television condition, the items were presented to subjects over a colour screen monitor, in the radio condition subjects were asked to face away from the colour screen monitor, facing the wall while the items were played and in the print condition transcripts were of the items were handed out to each subject. All the stories were presented in the same order to all subjects in all conditions as follows; violent non-violent violent non-violent. A questionnaire was devised containing twenty questions (five per news item) requiring some detailed information from the stories. These questionnaires tested each subject recall of the news stories presented, for example Why were people demonstrating in the streets in Seoul? Subjects were awarded for each question that they got completely right three marks and two marks if the answer was partially right, and one if the answer can be understood (vague answer). The maximum mark that a subject can get was sixty marks. Procedure Subjects were randomly divided into the three different conditions. Subjects in each condition received the same instruction; they were told that they would be presented with news information either through television screen, a sound recorder or written transcript depending on the condition they are in. subjects in the television and radio condition were told that the presented information would last approximately four minutes and thirty seconds, whereas those in the print condition were informed that they would have about four minutes in which they should read the transcript. Subjects were told that immediately following the presentation, they would be given a series of questions based on the content of the news to test recall. The question test lasted approximately 10-15 minutes.