This article summarizes results from a series of psychological experiments about how people process information from television. Results are discussed in relation to six issues: (1) size of stimulus units; (2) complexity of television stimuli; (3) interdependence of time units in television presentations; (4) intra- versus interstimulus differences in processing; (5) message form versus message content; and (6) active versus passive processing. Each issue is related to the processing concepts of attention, mental effort, and memory, and to the design of laboratory experiments using television stimuli.
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