Multiple effects of visual format on TV news learning

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted on edited TV newscast sequences to clarify effects of film accompaniment on learning from heard news text. In Experiment 1,150 British subjects viewed a sequence with either film format throughout or alternating film and 'talking head' format between items. Those items that were presented by 'talking heads' in the mixed sequence were learned better with film format, in which the heard text was accompanied by appropriate moving pictures. However, no effect of uniform context was found on the remaining items. In Experiment 2, 91 German subjects viewed one of four versions of a bulletin, one with 'talking head', one with film throughout, the other two having complementary mixed-format patterns. Besides confirming a beneficial effect of film presentation over 'talking head' which accords with the findings of all studies of learning from material in the form of national network newscasts, the results showed an impairing effect of uniform visual format. This can explain 'contradictory' findings, notably with atypical test material.Despite progress in identifying presentation and viewer factors in learning from television newscasts (Wooddall, Davis, and Sahin

Effects of text structure on the impact of heard news

“…Current views of text processing suggest, in any event, that received messages are assembled by establishing coherences between such text elements and the contents of working memory, which vary according to the thematic content discovered in the text, the latter being mediated by schemata constituted by existing knowledge. Consistent with this notion in the present context is a strong correlation typically found between learning from heard news bulletins and general political and geopolitical knowledge (Findahl and Hoijer, 1976;Berry, 1983;Berry and Clifford, 1986;Brosius and Berry, 1990;Berry and Brosius, 1991). Such knowledge is a strong covariate of subjects' educational level (Findahl and Hoijer, 1976;Berry and Clifford, 1986), and indeed appears to afford a psychological explanation of the apparent effect of this demographic variable (Berry and Clifford, 1986).…”

“…This may be a more pressing question in one sense, since TV news, at least in Britain, appears to have a higher incidence of poorly structured news story texts than radio, and to be more the subject of complaints about 'bias'. Although using pictures to 'support' television news texts can enhance comprehension directly (Berry and Brosius, 1991), the evidence from both studies here, using texts compiled originally for television, suggests that their very use may sometimes give rise indirectly to much larger countervailing effects by occasioning the disordering of text structure with current practices. However, it may prove difficult to confirm this directly by visual re-editing of broadcast material, since the fact that texting is largely shaped by pictorial dramaturgy makes it hard to find items which readily permit visual restructuring which fits well with the textual.…”

“…In the meantime it may be noted that the 40-50 per cent improvements in news learning found with restructuring of heard texts are of a different order from those directly attributable to presenting pictures with TV news texts. In two recent studies (Berry and Brosius, 1991), the average increase resulting from film accompaniment in a mixed-format context typical of network TV news was only between 10 and 20 per cent.…”

“…the heard text (Berry and Brosius, 1991). However, this benefit varies greatly across story items, and is sometimes absent (Brosius and Berry, 1990;Berry and Brosius, 1991).…”

“…However, this benefit varies greatly across story items, and is sometimes absent (Brosius and Berry, 1990;Berry and Brosius, 1991). It seems likely that this inconsistency of effect results from large variation in the coherence of macro-structures caused by the strong visual priorities in the production of TV news texts, which can cause disruption of 'story grammar' of the kind associated with poor learning of simple stories (Thorndyke, 1979;Black, 1984), and that erratic enhancement of learning results from an interaction of pictures with this text coherence factor.…”