Conceptualizing Audio Message Complexity as Available Processing Resources

Abstract

This article describes and validates a human-centric measure of audio message complexity. Messages are coded in terms of the level of cognitive resources that would be automatically elicited and required to process the message. Indicators of automatic resources elicited come from counting the orienting eliciting audio content changes in radio messages (Acc). The indicator of resources required comes from counting the dimensions of audio information introduced (Aii) by these content changes. The combination produces an indicator of available resources that serves as the complexity variable. Messages high in available resources are low in complexity; messages low in available resources are high in complexity. Two experiments are presented exploring the empirical validity of the measures as both local (moment to moment) and global (message level) operationalizations of complexity. Results suggest the measures have high construct validity.A great deal of research, as well as commonsense, suggests that message complexity strongly influences both message processing and memory for mediated messages. Despite decades of research, however, we do not have standard measures of message

Event related message processing: perceiving and remembering changes in films with and without soundtrack

“…The authors' initial study (Lang et al, 2015) showed faster response latencies for probes with high Acc. The best recognition results were achieved when Acc was high but Aii was low.…”

“…However, the LC4MP provides substantial findings in regard to the specifics of audio information. A closer investigation on attention-related auditory complexity is linked with research on audio message complexity as available processing resource (Potter, Lang, & Bolls, 2008;Lang et al, 2015;Potter, Lynch, & Kraus, 2015;Potter & Lang, 2018).…”

Influence of Speech Rate and Information Density on Recognition: The Moderate Dynamic Mechanism

“…When the level of available resources is high, the message is thoroughly processed because far more resources are allocated to processing the message than required. On the contrary, when the available resources are low, the message is less thoroughly processed and task performance would decrease (Lang et al, 2013;Lang et al, 2006). The number of available resources an individual requires to process a message depends on the two conditions of stimuli: structural or formal complexity and information density.…”

Understanding Information Selection and Encoding from a Dynamic, Energy Saving, Evolved, Embodied, Embedded Perspective

“…For example, message complexity is usually defined in terms of things about messages (e.g., redundancy, pacing, emotional content, syntax, content difficulty). DHCCST reconceptualizes message complexity as the moment‐to‐moment change in the human's level of automatically allocated and automatically required cognitive resources when interacting with a given message (Lang, Gao, Potter, Lee, Park, & Bailey, ; Lang, Kurita, Gao, Rubenking, ; Lee & Lang, in press). Various aspects of content are redefined in terms of their effect on automatic resource allocation and automatic resource requirements.…”