Transcript The media and learning

The media and cognitive
information processing
Theory and research in cognitive
effects of the mass media
Psychology
One of the great questions is “How do we
think?”
It involves the ‘mind-body’ duality
It relates to human ascendance and
mastery
It presents us with a powerful tool for good
or ill
• Psychologists have struggled with the
question since the inception of the
discipline
• One early group of psychologists tried to
determine what goes on inside the mind
– Methods of introspection
– Freudianism
• Another group declared that only behavior
that the researcher could see was an
appropriate domain of research
– Experimentation
– Watson/Behaviorism
New emphasis on the ‘black
box’
• Beginning in the late 1950s and
accelerating through the 60s and 70s, a
paradigm known as cognitive information
processing developed
– Rejected behaviorism’s rules limiting
acceptable study to observable behavior
– However, tried to use more traditional
scientific methods to study what goes on
inside people’s heads
Cognitive information
processing
• An attempt to map the inner workings of the
brain using carefully constructed experiments
and scientific techniques
• Experimental studies
– Memory studies
– Physiological measures (more recent)
– Brain imaging
• Case studies of people with mental disorders
– Brain damage
Cognitive information
processing
• Combination of three influences
– Computers/information processing
– Information theory
– Cognitive psychology
• Dominant paradigm in current
psychological theory and research
A number of recurrent findings
• Limited capacity
• Different kinds of memories
– Visual
– Auditory
– Meaning (semantic)
• Ability to recall memories from childhood,
etc. during brain surgery
• Brain damage in certain areas leads to
short-term memory loss, etc.
Recurrent findings
• Automatic reactions to light, loud sound,
etc.
• Ability to focus attention on certain things
– Impact on memory
• Similar mistakes made in tasks
• Sources of confusion, distraction
• Forgetting
Major approaches
• Structures approach
• Process approach
• Schematic approach
Series of actions
• Perception
– Sensory reaction
– Human limitations/abilities
• Pattern matching
– Comparison with stored information to identify
objects, words, etc.
Sensory limitations
• Wolfen
Pattern recognition
Pattern recognition
• Apocalypse Now
Dual processing
• Sound and visual information are encoded
separately but simultaneously
• If they are mutually supportive memory is
enhanced
• If they are contradictory or just unrelated,
memory for the content may be reduced
• Rehearsal
– Repetition
– Elaborative rehearsal
• Encoding
– Laying down a memory trace
• Primacy/recency
• Trace strength (intensity)
• Schematization
Schema
• Most CIP theorists argue that networks of
concepts are maintained in memory
• These networks develop as the individual
grows and gains experience, learns, etc.
• Each individual develops a unique set of
schema
• Knowledge acquisition is guided by
existing schema
– What to pay attention to
– What the new information is related to
– What the object of attention “means”
• Action is guided by schema
• Retrieval
– Matching current information with stored
information
– Memory loss may be inability to find
information rather than actual decay
– Ability to effectively match stored info and new
info crucial
• Interpretation is the effectiveness of matching
– Must have appropriate and well-formed schema in
memory to draw upon
Attention
• Attention is the allocation of processing
effort
• Attention is crucial for moving information
through the series of transformations
necessary to remember and use
information
– Without attention, there will be no
consciousness or memory of experience, no
response, no reasoning
Attention allocation
• Attention can be allocated either
automatically or intentionally
– Certain stimuli draw attention without
conscious intent on the part of the audience
member
• Novelty, intensity, movement, danger
– Other stimuli draw attention based on
interests, needs, etc. of the audience member
• Ranges from conscious control to relatively
automatic
Automatic attention
– Other stimuli draw attention based on
interests, needs, etc. of the audience member
• Ranges from conscious control to relatively
automatic
– Most such attention allocation is based on
personal relevance, likely impact on yourself
or valued others, moral implications,
emotionality or personal interest
Personal relevance
• Relation to your background, demographic
characteristics, life history
– For example, a story about Kentucky may
hold special interest for Kentuckians
• Ratings for television shows are significantly higher
in towns they portray
– Drew Carey in Chicago
– Designing Women in Atlanta
– Fargo
Likely impact
• This is probably most clearly tied to news
– National v. local
• Local news watchers often are interested in socially rather
unimportant events
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Local sports
Graduations
Traffic accidents
Weather
– News is supposed to provide information that allows
the public to make wise democratic choices
• Its success is hotly debated
Moral implications
• When your values are implicated in a cop
story, news, reality show, etc., you are
more likely to attend to the content
Emotionality
• Portrayal of some emotional content draws
fairly automatic attention, while other types
are learned—we’ll address this later in the
semester
– “Fight or flight” emotions
– Social emotions
Personal interest
• Nature v. nurture
• Personal experience generates unique
schema that influence attention
– May develop a taste for rap music or for
orchestral music
– May gain a taste for science-fiction
– Childhood experience may generate a
positive attitude toward books, reading, etc.
and help the child learn to focus on plot, etc.
Personal interest
• Topical
– Sports narratives v. romance v. horror
Personal background
• Attention is directed by existing knowledge
and interests
– Based on genetics and/or experience
– Individual differences are probably more
heavily related to experience
• Interests
– Personal needs/life stage
– Generational experience
• New information is encoded more easily if
a well-formed schema is available that
relates to the new information—will tend to
draw attention to new information that
corresponds to existing knowledge
– Likely source of much of the selectivity
(limited effects) findings
Schema
• The schema chosen to interpret the new
information largely determine its meaning
– People will interpret the same content in
different ways
• Meaning is at least somewhat individual
• Through the socialization process, people
learn similar schemas for topic domains
Schema
• When the audience member applies a
schema unlike that of the producer to a
text, she is often said to have
‘misinterpreted’ or ‘distorted’ the meaning
of the text
– If we look at it differently, it is simply a case of
meaning formation like any other
Long-term memory
• Once the information has been
interpreted, it enters into long-term
memory in the adjusted schema
– The information may be retrieved in response
to new information in the working memory that
is determined to be related to it
– The likelihood of being retrieved varies with
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Recency of activation
Frequency of activation
Strength of memory trace
Related concepts in schema