Paul J. Elliott

BCA 600

Assignement 4

mercredi 28 septembre 2005

Most radio and television news stories are short, self-contained and produced for easy digestion. Previous tests have shown that most people recall what they have heard or seen.

Remembering both visual and auditory cues goes to the heart of what Ramachadran discussed in his lectures on processing and mapping information in the brain. Graber’s studies point out that visual themes are better remembered, and that recall increases the closer the visual and audio themes are to one another.

The studies listed by Harris are concerned with the emotional impact of visual images, showing that cognitive function is actually impaired by intense emotional reactions to intense or violent news stories. This results in diminished short-term memory of the story, but the intensity makes a greater impact on long-term memory.

As I am interested in television news production, who realizes every second of copy, audio and video counts, I want to get the maximum effect of every news story on the audience. Unlike print journalism, broadcast journalists do not have the advantage of having the audience give second look at what they’ve reported. So, I want to know from the perspective of the audience the effects on memory, considering perspective I have now of neuroscience from Ramachandran and of cognitive psychology and memory from Harris.

While Harris does outline some interesting studies, I still have some questions I want answered. There are some other independent variables I would like to introduce in my research to study their effects on memory and recall. I want to conduct studies and quantify the results that can be applied to news production at any level—local, network or cable.

Research Question:

I propose a series of tests to be done on a small group. These tests will utilize a number of video snapshots of newscasts containing audio, visual and text messages (crawlers, OTS and on-screen identifiers). After presenting a series of test shots, the sample audience will be given a written test with questions pertaining to recall of any and all elements. The tests will given in a progressive series of simple to complex stories, each selection measuring a variety of elements. I expect that recall will decrease with complexity.

How much information can be recalled from, say, a 2-3 minute in-depth story as compared to a 30 second OTS or VO? How is short-term memory impacted by the length of exposure to news stories. Short-term memory can be tested immediately after presentation of the news clips, and long-term memory can be tested after a longer period of time to be determined, such as 2-4 hours, for example.

I want to test the ability of an audience to recall the data stream that flows. I want to measure recall of this information according to the number of individual news items included in the crawler, and I want to test by increased repetition how that information is remembered. In this study the following hypotheses are proposed, and should be answered by the results given by the test group:

Hypothesis 1: The longer a news story is, the fewer details will be recalled.

Hypothesis 2: With more visual elements in a news story, ability to recall will decrease.

Hypothesis 3: Shorter news stories will be easier to recall than longer news stories, regardless of the complexity of elements.

Hypothesis 4: The more individual items included in text messages, the less recall there will be.

Hypothesis 5: With increasing frequency in repetition of presenting text information, the greater that information will be recalled.

Methodology:

Two groups will be selected for this study. The first one will be a control group, and the other will be the test group. The control group will be tested to see if the test news clips produce reliable and consistent responses. Those clips not shown to be reliable will not be in on the test group. The test group will be tested after a series of video clips, each time with more stories to absorb in length and complexity.

Sources: