Two experiments examined how TV news viewers divide attention between the audio and video messages of news stories. The experiment tested the "belongingness" hypothesis which asserts that two distinct perceptual stimuli will be attended to as ifthey were a single stimulus when they appear to belong together. The experiments extended the belongingness hypothesis by manipulating semantic units (ie., audio and video messages) rather than perceptual units. Auditory-visual redundancy was used to manipulate the belongingness variable. It was hypothesized that dissonant audio and video would be viewed as conveying two different messages, with the result that attentional capacity would be exceeded. Conversely, redundant stories would be viewed as conwying one message, with the results that attentional capacity would not be exceeded. Using secondary task methodology-reaction time tasks in Experiment I and memory preloads in Experiment 2-the belongingness hypothesis was supported.lthough the claim of the Roper Organization that most Americans get their news from television has elicited justi-A fiable skepticism (e.g., Lichty, 1982), no one seriously doubts that television is one of several primary sources of information, part of a common information base. And so it is important to discover why TV news viewers remember so little of what they see and hear. Indeed, field surveys strongly suggest that something is wrong, that viewers have a difficult time remembering the contents Tom Grimes is Ross Beach Professor of Communication in the A. Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kansas State University. The author wishes to thank Art Glenberg, John Theios, and William Epstein, all professors in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for their advice and help.Thanks are also extended to David Pioni, Professor of Psychology at Indiana University, for his help in reasoning through the preload methodology as applied to this stimulus. Byron Reeves, Professor of Communication at Stanford University, provided a very careful reading of the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions.
Although studies have shown that increases in the frequency of social media use may be associated with increases in depressive symptoms of individuals with depression, the current study aimed to identify specific social media behaviors related to major depressive disorder (MDD). Millennials (N = 504) who actively use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or Snapchat participated in an online survey assessing major depression and specific social media behaviors. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to identify specific social media behaviors associated with the presence of MDD.
Despite the public's awareness of social media addiction, academic research in this realm remains limited. Filling this gap in the literature, the current study sought to understand predictors of social media addiction across four of the most popular social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. Regression analyses showed support for a biopsychosocial approach, demonstrating that biological (age), social (including gender, intensity of use, need for social media, and social comparison), and psychological factors (specifically stress, empathic concern, conscientiousness, and depression) accounted for over 50% of the explained variance in social media addiction. Findings demonstrate that although younger individuals are highly susceptible to social media addiction, users who manifest empathy toward others may have an enhanced psychological resiliency against addiction. K E Y W O R D Sbiopsychosocial approach, mental health, problematic social media use, social media addiction, social media intensity
Television producers, across all types of programming, assume young viewers can parallel process simultaneously presented messages. For instance, television news producers appear to believe that young viewers can attend to weather icons, lexical news crawls, and sports scores while they also attend to news anchors who present the news. Nonetheless, attention theory suggests parallel processing on this scale cannot be executed effi ciently. Given the format's popularity, perhaps those messages take advantage of perceptual grouping, as described by Treisman, Kahneman, and Burkell (1983). Perceptual grouping describes a process where separate but semantically related messages are attended to simultaneously with minimal effort. Using secondary task methodology, we measured participants' attentional capacity while they watched an example of this format: CNN's Headline News. In addition to this visually complex condition, we created a visually simple condition by deleting graphics and news crawls. Participants in this latter condition attended to both the auditory and visual channels, thus retaining story facts conveyed by both channels. Participants in the complex condition, however, shifted attention to the auditory channel. Ten percent of the factual information contained in news stories was lost to participants. It appears that this multimessage format exceeded viewers' attentional capacity. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for attention theory.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.