Conceptualizing Visual Detail: Message Structure as a Predictor of Preferential Processing

At the Intersection of Motivational Relevance and Website Visual Complexity

“…Recently a series of experiments have demonstrated that details identified as central and peripheral in accordance with Heuer and Reisberg's (1992) definition were also associated with specific formal features (Yegiyan, 2014).…”

“…Recently a series of experiments have demonstrated that details identified as central and peripheral in accordance with Heuer and Reisberg’s (1992) definition were also associated with specific formal features (Yegiyan, 2014). The details perceived as central by most subjects were the largest objects or characters in a scene, were often framed in close-up shots, positioned in the foreground, kept on screen longer, located closer to the center of the visual field, brighter, and featured a higher contrast ratio.…”

“…The results of these studies laid a foundation for the structural definition of detail centrality (Yegiyan, 2014). Defined in terms of formal features rather than viewer judgment, details of visual scenes can now be investigated more systematically to better understand their contribution to overall message interpretation.…”

“…Adapted from Yegiyan (2014), central details in this study are movie clips presented on the website screen. As one can see in Figure 1, movie clips are the largest items for each screen display.…”

“…However, aversive motivational activation results in an initial allocation of resources to stimulus encoding and then (at the highest levels of activation) a gradual drop in resource allocation to stimulus encoding (for summary, see, A. Lang & Yegiyan, 2009;Yegiyan, 2014). In addition, a series of studies have demonstrated that this resource allocation is not uniform and that motivational systems can variably affect how different elements within the messages are encoded (Yegiyan, 2012(Yegiyan, , 2015b.…”