Samuel D. Bradley

Parsing the Resource Pie: Using STRTs to Measure Attention to Mediated Messages

This study directly tests the hypothesis that secondary task reaction time (STRTs) measured during television viewing index available resources rather than resources allocated by the viewer, resources required by the message, or resources remaining in the system. An initial test of the hypothesis did not support the theoretical interpretation of STRTs as either available or remaining resources. A subsequent secondary analysis introduced a new measure of television message complexity called information introduced. The stimuli were recoded using this measure and reanalyzed to test the same hypothesis. Results of the secondary analysis yielded a pattern of STRT responses supporting the prediction that STRTs are indexing available resources.

Psychophysiological and Memory Effects of Negative Political ADS: Aversive, Arousing, and Well Remembered

This study examines whether negative political advertisements elicit automatic activation in the aversive motivational system among viewers. A measure is introduced—the eyeblink startle reflex—that provides evidence that negative ads do activate the aversive motivational system. As these participants watched negative political ads, physiological responses indicated that their body was reflexively preparing to move away. Negative ads also elicited more physiological and self-reported arousal than moderate ads. Recognition data show that detailed information from negative ads is better recognized; however, participants were also more likely to incorrectly report that they recognized information from negative ads they did not see.

Dynamic, Embodied, Limited-Capacity Attention and Memory: Modeling Cognitive Processing of Mediated Stimuli

Abstract Human sensory processing does not occur in a vacuum. Instead it unfolds over time and reflects the motivational goals of the person. The perceptual system identifies emotionally relevant stimuli from the world, and these stimuli are processed differently than unemotional stimuli. As the nervous system prepares the body for action, motivated attention is directed to relevant objects in the world. These processes are not separable but rather reflect a unified embodied cognition. When visual information is mediated, the body still responds, and cognition of emotionally charged mediated topics reflects the bodys responses. This article outlines a dynamic, embodied approach to the cognitive processing of mediated stimuli, presents a connectionist model to account for the cognitive processing, and compares model predictions with past results. The model is driven by data and theoretical work in communication showing that arousal fundamentally affects processing of and memory for mediated messages.

Psychophysiological Responses to Background Brand Placements in Video Games

Researchers have typically employed cognitive and affective measures to study the effectiveness of brand placements in video games. A psychophysiological approach to measuring effectiveness has been sorely lacking and is necessary to help both academics and practitioners further their understanding of how brand placements work. The current study measures individuals’ orienting responses in terms of increased skin conductance and decreased heart rate upon exposure to brands in video games. Results indicate that game players register background advertisements subconsciously even though they may not be able to explicitly recall them later. There were no differences between gamers and nongamers in the recall and recognition of brands from the video game. Furthermore, brands with preexisting favorable attitudes automatically received further processing, suggesting orienting response is an indicator of initial perception rather than further elaboration.

Homosexual Imagery in Print Advertisements: Attended, Remembered, But Disliked

This study examines whether print advertisements featuring homosexual imagery elicit greater attention and recall while eliciting more negative responses than advertisements featuring heterosexual images. Data indicate that these advertisements were indeed better remembered and required more time to cognitively process, likely because of the advertisements imagery being inconsistent with existing gender schema. Other responses demonstrated that homosexual imagery negatively impacted opinions about the advertisement itself and the brand featured, and elicited more negative self-reported valence and arousal.

Examining the Eyeblink Startle Reflex as a Measure of Emotion and Motivation to Television Programming

This study examines the reliability and validity of the eyeblink startle reflex as a measure of emotional and motivational responding to television content. A pretest uses continuous response measurement to identify pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant scenes from a television drama. Acoustic startle probe methodology and facial electromyography are used to measure responding to these scenes during an experiment. Although past research has suggested that the startle reflex is a reliable measure of emotional responding to television and film content, there is reason to expect that this effect may be obfuscated if the probe falls close to a camera change or scene change. The startle reflex data offer convergent validity with the continuous response data and concurrent validity with the facial electromyographic data. However, the presence of a camera change or scene change within 500 ms of the startle probe did disrupt the emotional modulation of the reflex. These data show that the startle reflex can be a valid and reliable temporally precise measure of emotional responding to television programming if proximity to scene changes and camera changes is controlled.

Neural Network Simulations Support Heuristic Processing Model of Cultivation Effects

Many studies have shown that heavy TV viewers make social reality judgments more in line with televised reality. Shrums (2001) heuristic model of cultivation effects predicted and found that biases in first-order cultivation judgments resemble heuristic processing. Systematic processing eliminated the effect. This study presents a series of computational simulations to examine whether a simple feed-forward neural network model exhibits learning behavior in accordance with Shrums model. The data from the model are tested in contrast to data from human participants. Results closely fit human data. Simulations show that increased television exposure increases construct accessibility; television exemplars are not discounted when exhibiting the cultivation effect; and systematic processing reduces or eliminates the cultivation effect.

Reconstructing the Remote Television Memory Test: Measuring Individual Differences in Long-Term Memory

Memory plays a role in many communications theories; however, few studies consider individual differences in memory. The results are reported here for two original studies designed to reconstruct a previously validated measure for television memory constructed to assess how people forget information over time. The remote television memory test assesses recognition memory for the titles of broadcast television programs canceled after a single season. Results from two studies show that the measure is reliable across repeated administrations among independent samples, exhibits a forgetting curve over time, is uncorrelated with total television viewing, appears to be approximately normally distributed, and predicts social reality estimates typical of the cultivation effect independently from total viewing. More work is needed to further assess the construct validity of the measure. Practical implications of administration also are discussed.

Emotion Trumps Attention: Using Prepulse Startle Probe Methodology to Assess Cognitive Processing of Television

The evoked startle reflex (SR) has proven effective in measuring attention to simple stimuli; however, an initial investigation of the SR during television viewing found that emotion dominated the responses. This article reports an experiment that paired the acoustic startle probe with a sub-startle threshold acoustic prepulse. The interval between these two acoustic stimuli was varied while participants watched emotional television. When a startle probe closely follows the prepulse (< 500 ms), the SR is attenuated (known as prepulse inhibition). Previous work with simple stimuli demonstrated that at short intervals, the degree of inhibition indexes attention, and at longer intervals, the SR indexes emotion. Current data show a strong effect for emotion and for prepulse inhibition, but there is no evidence of attentional modulation during television viewing. SRs were largest during unpleasant scenes at every interval, which accords with the emotion-driven pattern. This replicates previous findings suggesting that startle probe methodology is a reliable measure of emotional responding to television. However, unlike simple stimuli, the SR appears not to index attention to television. The larger effect of emotion corresponds with past work suggesting that emotional responses to television are greater in magnitude than those to affective pictures.