The Effects of Edits on Arousal, Attention, and Memory for Television Messages: When an Edit Is an Edit Can an Edit Be Too Much?

Theoretically, it is interesting to note that the pattern of these results suggests that the relationship between arousal and edits is not precisely linear. Slow and medium levels of edits appear to result in a lower level of arousal, while fast and very fast levels of edits result in a higher level of arousal. This suggests a step function as opposed to a linear relationship. Previous research, using cuts, showed increasing arousal levels for each level of cuts. Future research should continue to probe the shape of this relationship and test even faster rates of edits to determine whether there is a point at which memory begins to decline.

In addition, future research should examine the impact of faster rates of edits on messages which vary in terms of content difficulty. In easy messages, for example, the number of edits may never increase to a point where the processing system is overloaded. In difficult messages, however, a fast rate of edits might at some point overload the processing system.

It would also be interesting to examine the differential impact of rate of edits on visual and verbal memory. This study only investigated the impact of edits on visual memory in a recognition task. Some previous research (Lang, 1994; Lang, Potter, & Bolls, 1999) suggests that visual structural features which increase cognitive load may disproportionately impair memory for the verbal elements of the message as opposed to the visual elements of the message.

These results continue to support the usefulness of the limited capacity approach to television viewing as a framework for investigating the impact of message variables on the information processing of television messages. Future research should continue to examine the effects of edits and other structural features of television on viewer processing of messages.

Notes

(1) This is a fixed capacity model. The psychology literature contains both fixed and variable capacity models (Kahneman, 1976). However, research using the limited capacity model of television viewing has consistently supported predictions made by a fixed model. Since a fixed capacity model is more parsimonious than a variable capacity model, we have continued to use a fixed capacity model.

(2) The amount of information introduced by a cut is a continuous variable. The distinction being made here is an attempt to define a range of values at either end of that continuum. Some "edits" will introduce a good deal more information than others. For example, an establishing shot of a crowd, followed by a cut to a close-up of an individual in the crowd, we would define as an edit in this study, but it clearly introduces a great deal of new information. Other "edits" introduce very little new information, such as the change from a camera on the left side of a set to a camera on the right side. In this study, a cut to anything that existed in a previous establishing shot was called an edit. If the cut was to something which did not appear in a previous establishing shot, it was called a cut. All of the cuts and edits occurred in coherent 30 second messages.

(3) In addition, increased arousal has been theorized to increase cognitive capacity (Kahneman, 1976). This hypothesis has been tested twice in the context of television viewing using the limited capacity model. In neither case (lid the data support the hypothesis that increased arousal increased capacity (Lang, Dillon, & Dong, 1995; Lang et al., 1999).

(4) Other research, and our experience gathering the stimuli, suggest that these rates are within (and possibly cover comprehensively) the normal range of rate of edits in naturally occurring television. For example, Hibbs, Bolls, & Lang (1995) selected a random sample of 70 two-minute television messages. They found that the number of edits in these messages ranged from 0-57 with an average of 14.1. The average would be in our medium range, with our fast and very fast rates being well above average. The same study found the rate of scene changes or cuts to range from 0-54 within average of 8.9. Thus, holding our rate of cuts to less than 3 in two minutes does correspond to a slow rate of cuts. Another example can be found in a content analysis of the structural features of standard and tabloid news magazines shows. Grabe, Zhou, & Barnett (1998) found that the average shot length for standard TV news magazines was 5.28 seconds, and for tabloid news magazine shows it was 3.72. These numbers correspond to an average rate of combined cuts and edits of ten per minute for standard news magazine shows and sixteen per minute for the tabloid shows. This would make the standard shows medium and the tabloid shows fast in this study.

(5) Epsilon squared is a standard effect size estimate which can be used with repeated measures analysis. Epsilon-squared is a more conservative estimate of effect size than the better known eta-squared (Keppel, 1982).

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