MESSAGE PROCESSING

With the invention of computers, a variety of disciplines have applied the computer metaphor for understanding their field. This "information processing" approach has been pursued in the field of psychology. Under this paradigm we can approach the common research finding that the understanding of any message is a reconstructive process -- that is, people understand the message in a variety of ways, depending on what the receiver brings to the situation. Needs and wants, for example, color our perceptions; a hungry person is more likely to perceive food items in an ambiguous stimulus. Two different people hearing the same speech will hear different things, find different biases, and interpret what they hear in different ways.

In the field of communication and advertising the focus is on how people process, interpret, and store messages. When the information processing approach is applied to these problems, I like to identify it as "message processing theory." The general focus is on how the same face-to-face or mediated message is attended to, processed, and stored differently by different people. Also of interest is how producers of messages -- print or broadcasts news journalists, film and television directors, or advertisers -- can apply an understanding of audience limitations and strategies to help insure that a larger number of their audience understands, interprets, and remembers their message, and that the message is more in line with the message that they sent.

In the context of television, social science research consistently shows two pieces of evidence which suggest the importance of the message processing approach. First, people can watch a news program, or even a situation comedy, but remember little. Why is their memory so poor? Second, there is great variability in the message that is received. Not only does the message sent bear limited resemblance to the message that was sent, but different receivers will interpret the message in different ways, remember different things about the message.

A fundamental starting point in this research has to do with the process of attention. The main question is whether people's attention is limited in such a way that it restricts people's ability to process what comes to them over television. It is possible that the rate of information or the two competing modalities presents information that hinders their memory for the information. Although previous research has tried to infer those limitations from measurements of what people remember, the cognitive revolution in psychology suggests that we may be able to do a better job of modeling the process that occurs within the "black box" of the human brain.

One strategy that has been applied in psychology is the Secondary Reaction Task (or SRT). According to theories proposed by Broadbent, Posner, and Wickens, the SRT provides information on the availability of mental resources, and indirectly, the resources that are being used. While focused on a primary task, the time to respond to a cue, usually a tone or flash, is believed to offer insights into the amount of resources that are being used, and, indirectly, the difficulty of the task. So far, so good.

When applied to communication situations, however, there are several additional problems that enter the picture. These show up in studies by Reeves and Thorson that show that SRTs are, contrary to predictions based on the psychological research, that people have faster SRTs to difficult television material. There may be two complicating factors. First, people may devote a varying amount of resources to the primary task, perhaps putting more or less effort into television viewing based on their interest or motivation. Therefore, the overall of resources may change. Second, television information is presented in two modalities -- the same modalities that are used to cue the secondary task. It is possible, therefore, that reaction times may not be slowed because of the difficulty of the task, but may also be faster because people are devoting more attention to television modality, which, by chance, also is the modality that carries the SRT cue.

My dissertation further examined the phenomenon of how people's SRTs can be speeded by difficult television material. It tested whether viewers can shift resources to a single modality (auditory or visual) based either on what is occurring on TV or instructions. The results suggested that attention resources appear to be "ganged" together, so that people can pay more attention or less attention, but cannot shift these resources between the two modalities.

My later research has attempted to test which attributes of television programs, and the tasks that viewers are performing on that material, slow SRTs. Two separate studies show that secondary reaction times are most affected not by the features of television, but its content. Features such as music, speaking, object motion and camera motion do not have much effect on secondary reaction times. Content factors such as scene changes and the number of people in the scene, do slow reaction times. This appears to suggest that SRTs are less affected by automatic attention or sensory processing than by thoughtful goal-directed processing. People's prior experiences and what they are looking for has a very large role in shaping what message they remember. It appears, therefore, that the limitations of television has less to do with the number of modalities, or the number of things that are occurring at a given time, so much as why people are viewing and what their background is. This often shapes what they consider to be the main "content" of the message. What people attend to and remember is shaped by what they are looking for.

I cover more on the message processing approach in my graduate effects advertising class. To see the syllabus for this class click here.