Responding to Change on TV: How Viewer-Controlled Changes in Content Differ From Programmed Changes in Content

Abstract

Two experiments explored differences in television viewers' responses to viewercontrolled and producer-controlled content changes. Viewers in both studies could change channels among 4 different newscasts. Orienting, sympathetic activation, cognitive effort, and recognition were compared in the moments following both channel changes (viewer control) and cuts (producer control). Neither channel changes nor cuts elicited orienting. Sympathetic activation was higher following channel changes, while cognitive effort was higher following cuts. In 1 experiment, recognition accuracy was higher after a cut than it was after a channel change. These results inform how the exertion of control over media content alters psychological processing.It seems safe to say that the remote control has fundamentally changed television viewing. Nearly every television sold in the United States today comes equipped with a remote control (Frisby, 1999; Zenith). People fight over who wields it (McBride, 1995). Producers have altered the way they make programs in order

Multitasking on a Single Device: Arousal and the Frequency, Anticipation, and Prediction of Switching Between Media Content on a Computer

“…Wang et al have suggested that increased boredom leads to channel changes (Wang et al, 2006), and have found that arousing media content causes large increases in SCL and is a significant predictor when modeling dynamic channel-changing behavior (Wang et al, 2011). Other studies (Lang et al, 2005;Wise, Lee, Lang, Fox, & Grabe, 2008) found that switches during television viewing are usually associated with a particular trend in sympathetic arousal: linear decreases up until the moment of a switch and brief periods (seconds) of heightened arousal after a switch. As the authors note, this suggests that viewing is a relatively passive, low-involvement experience.…”

“…Some studies have examined how processing differs between user‐ and device‐driven switches, finding that increases in physiological arousal after a channel change (Wise et al, ) or new picture onset on a computer screen (Wise & Reeves, ) are relatively greater when switches are initiated by users. That is, across different media devices, user control over task switches is associated with heightened arousal.…”

“…Second, based on the theory of motivated cognition, we wanted to know how switching is related to arousal, both responses that follow a switch (something that has been studied only in laboratory settings), as well as arousal levels that precede and motivate a switch (something that few researchers have investigated and only in the lab). Previous research has found that switches to new content elicit increases in sympathetic activation, with physiological arousal temporarily increasing and then returning to baseline in the few seconds following a switch, whether during television viewing (Lang et al, ; Wise et al, ) or computer use (Wise & Reeves, ). The theory of motivated cognition says that switches stem from lowinvolvement with current content and that new content elicits renewed interest.…”

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

“…Thus, central details are prioritized or privileged in terms of encoding. Research on automatic and controlled information processing provides compelling evidence that people notice and pay attention to details not only because people are consciously looking for them, but also because they are readily available to people due to their size, proximity, dynamism, and other physical properties (Wise, Lee, Lang, Fox, & Grabe, 2008). Advertising research has reliably replicated the preferential processing effect for object size (e.g., Burtt, 1938;Grabe & Bucy, 2009), object number (Reynolds & Miller, 2009), brightness and contrast (see also Palmer, 2003), location on page/screen (Lucas & Britt, 1950), and proximity to the viewer and camera angle (Grabe & Bucy, 2009), as well as dynamic factors such as objects in motion/action (Shipley & Zacks, 2008), camera zoom-in and zoom-out and over-the-shoulder camera technique (Grabe, Zhou, & Barnett, 2001), and camera changes Downloaded by [University of Saskatchewan Library] at 23:02 13 March 2015 .…”

News Crawls in Local TV News: Do They Help or Hinder Information Recall and Retention

“…However, Lecheler et al (2015) argue that the specific content of a message, regardless of its positive or negative connotation, is what elicits high emotional responses, which can in turn, dictate retention. Wise et al (2008) consider both producer and viewer cuts and channel changes during a news program to have a significant effect on cognitive processing. Moments leading up to a change in stimulus, as controlled by the viewer, were found to produce less cognitive processing, while effort, arousal and encoding were increased when presented with the new stimulus (Lang et al, 2005).…”