Nils Holmberg

The use of eye-tracking and retrospective interviews to study teenagers’ exposure to online advertising

This study investigated (1) potential exposure, (2) actual exposure, and (3) perceived exposure to online advertising in Swedish 15-year-olds. Eye movements of these teenagers were measured while they surfed on the internet for 15 minutes. The results show that the teenagers were potentially exposed to 132 advertisements during this time. The actual exposure was 10 per cent of all potential advertisements. A mixed effect model analysis indicates that position and size of advertisements are important factors influencing the teenagers’ visual attention to advertising, whereas subject gender did not have any significant effect. A retrospective interview based on previously recorded eye-tracking data revealed that there was a substantial difference between the teenagers’ actual and perceived exposure to advertisements, and that they were mainly unaware of their actual exposure. The retrospective interviews also showed that the subjects had difficulties in identifying the advertisements and advertised product, as well as the advertiser.

Advert saliency distracts children's visual attention during task-oriented internet use

The general research question of the present study was to assess the impact of visually salient online adverts on childrens task-oriented internet use. In order to answer this question, an experimental study was constructed in which 9- and 12-year-old Swedish children were asked to solve a number of tasks while interacting with a mockup website. In each trial, web adverts in several saliency conditions were presented. By both measuring childrens task accuracy, as well as the visual processing involved in solving these tasks, this study allows us to infer how two types of visual saliency affect childrens attentional behavior, and whether such behavioral effects also impacts their task performance. Analyses show that low-level visual features and task relevance in online adverts have different effects on performance measures and process measures respectively. Whereas task performance is stable with regard to several advert saliency conditions, a marked effect is seen on childrens gaze behavior. On the other hand, task performance is shown to be more sensitive to individual differences such as age, gender and level of gaze control. The results provide evidence about cognitive and behavioral distraction effects in childrens task-oriented internet use caused by visual saliency in online adverts. The experiment suggests that children to some extent are able to compensate for behavioral effects caused by distracting visual stimuli when solving prospective memory tasks. Suggestions are given for further research into the interdiciplinary area between media research and cognitive science.

The impact of sound presentations on executive control: Evidence from eye movements

To examine the influence on performance of sound presentation considered more or less disturbing, distracting, and intrusive, an antisaccade task was used to assess executive control over reflexive eye movements. By examining the latency and proportion of correct eye movements in eight sound presentations for 32 participants (15 female), the effect of disturbance from sound was measured. The only effect found for latency was a significant increase during the Mozart violin concerto, suggesting an unconscious speed–accuracy tradeoff. Participants inhibited reflexive eye movements in favour of correct responses, which were marginally better than the silent control condition. The mean number of correctly launched saccades was significantly lower during three sound presentations which were all social in nature, namely playing children, crying baby, and babble noise. These were also classified as highly disturbing by participants. This suggests that certain sounds can have a large effect on executive control. Finally, the sound presentation with children playing affected females significantly more negatively than males, as seen in lower mean numbers of correctly launched saccades.

Effects of online advertising on children's visual attention and task performance during free and goal-directed internet use : A media psychology approach to children's website interaction and advert distraction

This dissertation consists of four eye-tracking studies that investigate how salient online advertising and childrens level of executive function contributes to their advert distraction. In Study 1, children aged 9 were instructed to surf freely on the internet while all advert material appearing on-screen was registered. The analyses examined how perceptual prominence in each online advert was related to childrens visual attention. In Study 2, a mock-up advergame website was designed with controlled advert conditions, and children aged 9 and 12 were instructed to solve a number of in-game tasks. This study investigated the combined effects of perceptual prominence (e.g. abrupt onset) and content relevance (e.g. personalized content) on childrens advert distraction. The results of the first two studies showed significant positive effects of advert saliency on childrens visual attention. Due to the task-oriented research design used in the second study, it was possible to interpret these effects on visual attention in terms of advert distraction. Both studies showed that higher levels of inhibitory control in children significantly decreased the effects of advert saliency on visual attention and advert distraction.The following two studies, investigated how advert animation affected childrens online reading comprehension and information search on commercial websites. In Study 3, children aged 9 were presented with factual texts that they were instructed to read in order to answer comprehension questions. Each text was presented on a web page which also featured static or animated online adverts. In Study 4, children aged 9 were instructed to solve two online task types featuring concurrent online advertising: reading and information search. The results of these studies showed that animated online advertising had significant negative effects on childrens task performance. In the third study, it was found that animated adverts had a negative effect on childrens reading comprehension, and that this negative effect was stronger among children with low levels of inhibitory control. The fourth study found that advert animation had a significant positive effect on childrens cognitive load across task types. Taken together, this dissertation project has studied childrens online advert distraction in a wide range of realistic internet usage situations.