The media and cognitive information processing

1. The media and cognitive information processing Theory and research in cognitive effects of the mass media

2. Psychology One of the great questions is “How do we think?” It involves the ‘mind-body’ duality It relates to human ascendance and mastery It presents us with a powerful tool for good or ill

3. Psychologists have struggled with the question since the inception of the discipline • One early group of psychologists tried to determine what goes on inside the mind • Methods of introspection • Freudianism

4. Another group declared that only behavior that the researcher could see was an appropriate domain of research • Experimentation • Watson/Behaviorism

5. New emphasis on the ‘black box’ • Beginning in the late 1950s and accelerating through the 60s and 70s, a paradigm known as cognitive information processing developed • Rejected behaviorism’s rules limiting acceptable study to observable behavior • However, tried to use more traditional scientific methods to study what goes on inside people’s heads

6. Cognitive information processing • An attempt to map the inner workings of the brain using carefully constructed experiments and scientific techniques • Experimental studies • Memory studies • Physiological measures (more recent) • Brain imaging • Case studies of people with mental disorders • Brain damage

8. Cognitive information processing • Combination of three influences • Computers/information processing • Information theory • Cognitive psychology • Dominant paradigm in current psychological theory and research

9. A number of recurrent findings • Limited capacity • Different kinds of memories • Visual • Auditory • Meaning (semantic) • Ability to recall memories from childhood, etc. during brain surgery • Brain damage in certain areas leads to short-term memory loss, etc.

10. Recurrent findings • Automatic reactions to light, loud sound, etc. • Ability to focus attention on certain things • Impact on memory • Similar mistakes made in tasks • Sources of confusion, distraction • Forgetting

11. Major approaches • Structures approach • Process approach • Schematic approach

14. Series of actions • Perception • Sensory reaction • Human limitations/abilities • Pattern matching • Comparison with stored information to identify objects, words, etc.

15. Sensory limitations • Wolfen

16. Pattern recognition

17. Pattern recognition • Apocalypse Now

18. Rehearsal • Repetition • Elaborative rehearsal • Encoding • Laying down a memory trace • Primacy/recency • Trace strength (intensity) • Schematization

20. Schema • Most CIP theorists argue that networks of concepts are maintained in memory • These networks develop as the individual grows and gains experience, learns, etc. • Each individual develops a unique set of schema

21. Knowledge acquisition is guided by existing schema • What to pay attention to • What the new information is related to • What the object of attention “means” • Action is guided by schema

22. Retrieval • Matching current information with stored information • Memory loss may be inability to find information rather than actual decay • Ability to effectively match stored info and new info crucial • Interpretation is the effectiveness of matching • Must have appropriate and well-formed schema in memory to draw upon

24. Attention • Attention is the allocation of processing effort • Attention is crucial for moving information through the series of transformations necessary to remember and use information • Without attention, there will be no consciousness or memory of experience, no response, no reasoning

25. Attention allocation • Attention can be allocated either automatically or intentionally • Certain stimuli draw attention without conscious intent on the part of the audience member • Novelty, intensity, movement, danger • Other stimuli draw attention based on interests, needs, etc. of the audience member • Ranges from conscious control to relatively automatic

26. Automatic attention

27. Automatic attention • Advertisements • Apocalypse Now

28. Personal background • Attention is directed by existing knowledge and interests • Based on genetics and/or experience • Individual differences are probably more heavily related to experience • Interests • Personal needs/life stage • Generational experience

29. New information is encoded more easily if a well-formed schema is available that relates to the new information—will tend to draw attention to new information that corresponds to existing knowledge • Likely source of much of the selectivity (limited effects) findings