Past controversies over the relative effectiveness of auditory, visual, and audiovisual channels are seen as the results of nondifferentiation of error and equivocation. Seventh grade students were used as Ss in an experiment consisting of noise and no noise conditions with constrained and nonconstrained communication in A, V, and AV treatments. Data were examined in terms of output, error, equivocation, and recalled (shared) information based upon information theory.The superiority of the AV treatment was substantiated in all respects of information processing, making less error and equivocation, but recalling more information correctly as compared with the A or V channel. Comparisons between A and V unequivocally established the fact that V made less error but more equivocation, whereas A processed more output information and also made more error; however, there was no significant difference between them in recalled information.The dependence of A upon constraint was found to be far greater than that of AV whose dependence in turn was greater than that of V. Noise was found to affect A most, V the next most, and AV the least. With between-channel redundancy AV seemed to be capable of reducing the effect of noise.Countless studies on the relative effectiveness of channels and modalities have appeared since the turn of this century. Ever since TV became a teaching instrument, the battle of channel superiority-the superiority of one channel over the other, or that of a single channel over dual and multiple channels, or viceversa-has been even more fiercely fought. No generally acceptable theory concerning the difference of media has been offered, in spite of the fact that experiments and studies seeking to resolve theoretical problems concerning the different efficacies of various The writer, who received his Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the University of Wisconsin in 1967, is currently engaged in basic television research with Television Bureau of Advertising Inc., New York. He was a reporter and columnist in Hong Kong before coming to the United States for further education.

To examine the effects of noise in auditory (A), visual (V), and audiovisual (AV) channels with varying difficulty levels of input information, 192 seventh grade Ss were tested under six conditions: A, V, and AV with and without noise. It was determined that noise had no detrimental effects upon information processing when input was not difficult, only A was significantly deteriorated by the presence of noise, whereas noise seemed to alert Ss in the AV treatment, AV was generally found to be better than A, which in turn was generally better than V, channel difference vanished when input was very difficult.

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