Multiple resource theory proposes that attention is a process of resource allocation. These resources may be shifted among different modalities and information-processing tasks. This study investigated whether selective attention to a particular television modality results in different levels of attention to the visual and auditory modalities. Two independent variables manipulated selective attention—the modality with the most information (audio or video) and viewers' instructed focus (audio or video). These variables were fully crossed in a within-subjects experimental design. Attention levels were investigated by measuring reaction times to cues in each modality (audio tones and color flashes). All five manipulation checks suggest that subjects were able to focus on a particular message channel. Reactions to cues were faster, however, when the audio channel contained the most information and when viewers focused on the audio channel. These results suggest a common pool of limited attentional resources and therefore bimodal attention.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Allport, A.
(1989). Visual attention. In M. I. Posner (Ed.), Foundations of cognitive science (pp. 631-682). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2.
Anderson, D. R.
, & Lorch, E. P. (1983). Looking at television: Action or reaction? In J. Bryant & D. R. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of television (pp. 1-32). New York: Academic Press.
3.
Basil, M. D.
(this issue). Multiple resource theory I: Application to television viewing. Communication Research, 21, 208-231.
4.
Basil, M. D.
(in press). Secondary reaction tasks. In A. Lang (Ed.), Measuring psychological responses to media. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
5.
Basil, M. D.
, & Melwani, G. (1991, August). Secondary tasks as a measure of processing limitations: The role of features and content. Paper presented to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Boston, MA.
6.
Britton, B. K.
, Glynn, S. M., Meyer, B.J.F., & Penland, M. J. (1982). Effects of text structure on use of cognitive capacity during reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 24, 51-61.
7.
Broadbent, D.
(1958). Perception and communication. New York: Pergamon.
8.
Burriss, L. L.
(1987). How anchors, reporters, and newsmakers affect recall and evaluation of stories. Journalism Quarterly, 64, 514-519, 532.
9.
Chaffee, S. H.
, & Schleuder, J. (1986). Measurement and effects of attention to news media. Human Communication Research, 13, 76-107.
10.
Cherry, C.
(1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech with one and two ears. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 23, 915-919.
11.
Collins, W. A.
(1982). Cognitive processing in television viewing. In E. Wartella & D. C. Whitney (Eds.), Mass communication review yearbook, (Vol. 4, pp. 195-209). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
12.
Dhawan, M.
, & Pellegrino, J. W. (1977). Acoustic and semantic interference effects in words and pictures. Memory & Cognition, 5, 340-346.
13.
Dornbush, R. L.
(1970). Attention in bisensory simultaneous short-term memory. Perception and Psychophysics, 7, 244-246.
14.
Geiger, S.
(1988, May). Stimulus characteristics, processing strategies, and television viewing: A levels of processing approach. Paper presented to the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA.
15.
Geiger, S.
, & Reeves, B. (1993a). We interrupt this program... Attention for television sequences. Human Communication Research, 19, 368-387.
16.
Geiger, S.
, & Reeves, B. (1993b). The effects of scene changes and semantic relatedness on attention to television. Communication Research, 20, 155-175.
17.
Graber, D.
(1989). Content and meaning: What's it all about?American Behavioral Scientist, 33, 144-152.
18.
Graber, D.
(1990). Seeing is remembering: How visuals contribute to learning from television news. Journal of Communication, 40, 134-155.
19.
Grimes, T.
(1990a). Audio-visual correspondence and its role in attention and memory. Educational Technology Research and Development, 38, 15-25.
20.
Grimes, T.
(1990b). Encoding TV news messages into memory. Journalism Quarterly, 67, 757-766.
21.
Grimes, T.
(1991). Mild auditory-visual dissonance in television news may exceed viewer attentional capacity. Human Communication Research, 18, 268-298.
22.
Gunter, B.
(1987). Poor reception: Misunderstanding and forgetting broadcast news. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
23.
Jackson, S.
(1992). Message effects research: Principles of design and analysis. New York: Guilford.
24.
Kahneman, D.
(1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
25.
Katz, E.
, Adoni, H., & Parness, P. (1977). Remembering the news: What pictures add to recall. Journalism Quarterly, 54, 231-239.
26.
Kepplinger, H. M.
(1991). The impact of presentation techniques: Theoretical aspects and empirical findings. In F. Biocca (Ed.), Television and political advertising, Volume 1: Psychological processes (pp. 173-194). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
27.
Kim, Y-H.
, Hawkins, R. P., & Pingree, S. (1991, May). Attention inertia on bit-boundaries. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, Chicago.
28.
Krull, R.
, & Husson, W. (1979). Children's attention: The case of TV viewing. In E. Wartella (Ed.), Media and development of thought, speech, understanding (pp. 83-114). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
29.
Lang, A.
(1990). Involuntary attention and physiological arousal evoked by structural features and emotional content in TV commercials. Communication Research, 17, 275-299.
30.
Levy, M. R.
(1989). TV news research is more than cognitive psychology: Comments on Reeves. American Behavioral Scientist, 33, 203-205.
31.
Lewis, C.
(1984). Reporting for television. New York: Columbia University Press.
32.
Maccoby, E. E.
(1969). The development of stimulus selection. In J. P. Hill (Ed.), Minnesota symposium on child psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 68-96). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
33.
McDaniel, D.
(1973). Film's presumed advantages in presenting television news. Journalism Quarterly, 50, 146-149.
34.
McLeod, J.
, & Pan, Z. (1989). Getting levels across and crossing levels: Comments on Reeves. American Behavioral Scientist, 33, 199-202.
35.
Meadowcroft, J. M.
, & Reeves, B. (1989). Influence of story schema development on children's attention to television. Communication Research, 16, 352-404.
36.
Mitchell, D. B.
, & Hunt, R. R. (1989). How much effort should be devoted to memory?Memory and Cognition, 17, 337-348.
37.
Moray, N.
(1959). Attention to dichotic listening: Affective cues and the influence of instructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 11, 56-60.
38.
Navon, D.
, & Gopher, D. (1979). On the economy of the human processing system. Psychological Review, 86, 214-255.
39.
Navon, D.
, & Gopher, D. (1980). Task difficulty, resources, and dual-task performance. In R. S. Nickerson (Ed.), Attention and performance VIII (pp. 297-315). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
40.
Neisser, U.
(1967). Cognitive psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
41.
Norman, D. A.
, & Bobrow, D. G. (1975). On data-limited and resource-limited processes. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 44-64.
42.
Pezdek, K.
, & Hartman, E. F. (1983). Children's television viewing: Attention and comprehension of auditory versus visual information. Child Development, 54, 1015-1023.
43.
Posner, M. I.
, Nissen, M. J., & Klein, R. M. (1976). Visual dominance: An information-processing account of its origins and significance. Psychological Review, 83, 157-171.
44.
Reeves, B.
(1989). Theories about news and theories about cognition: Arguments for a more radical separation. American Behavioral Scientist, 33, 191-198.
45.
Reeves, B.
, & Geiger, S. (in press). Designing experiments that assess psychological responses to media messages. In A. Lang (Ed.), Measuring psychological responses to media. Hillsdale, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum.
46.
Reeves, B.
, Newhagen, J., Maibach, E., Basil, M., & Kurz, K. (1991). Negative and positive television messages: Effects of message type and context on attention and memory. American Behavioral Scientist, 34, 679-694.
47.
Reeves, B.
, & Thorson, E. (1986). Watching television: Experiments on the viewing process. Communication Research, 13, 343-361.
48.
Reeves, B.
, Thorson, E., & Schleuder, J. (1985). Attention to television: Psychological theories and chronometric measures. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Perspectives on media effects (pp. 239-248). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
49.
Robinson, J. P.
, & Davis, D. K. (1990). Television news and the informed public: An information-processing approach. Journal of Communication, 40, 106-119.
50.
Salomon, G.
(1979). Interaction of media, content, and learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
51.
Salomon, G.
(1983). Television watching and mental effort: A social psychological view. In J. Bryant & D. R. Anderson (Eds.), Children's understanding of television (pp. 181-198). New York: Academic Press.
52.
Schleuder, J.
, Thorson, E., & Reeves, B. (1988, May). Effects of time compression and complexity on attention to television commercials. Paper presented to the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA.
53.
Schneider, W.
, Dumais, S. T., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1984). Automatic and control processing and attention. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention (pp. 1-27). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
54.
Severin, W. J.
(1967). Pictures as relevant cues in multi-channel communication. Journalism Quarterly, 44, 17-22.
55.
Shiffrin, R. M.
, & Grantham, D. W. (1974). Can attention be allocated to sensory modalities?Perception and Psychophysics, 15, 460-474.
56.
Sperling, G.
, & Dosher, B. (1986). Strategy and optimization in human information processing. In K. Boff, L. Kaufman, & J. Thomas (Eds.), Handbook of perception and performance (Vol. 1). New York: Wiley.
57.
Swets, J. A.
(1984). Mathematical models of attention. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention (pp. 183-242). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
58.
Thorson, E.
, Reeves, B., & Schleuder, J. (1985). Message complexity and attention to television. Communication Research, 12, 427-454.
59.
Thorson, E.
, Reeves, B., & Schleuder, J. (1987). Attention to local and global complexity in television messages. In M. L. McLaughlin (Ed.), Communication yearbook 10. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
60.
Triesman, A. M.
(1964). Verbal cues, language, and meaning in selective attention. American Journal of Psychology, 77, 206-219.
61.
Triesman, A. M.
(1968). Strategies and models of selective attention. Psychological Review, 76, 282-299.
62.
Triesman, A. M.
, & Riley, J.G.A. (1969). Is selective attention selective perception or selective response? A further test. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 79, 27-34.
63.
Watt, J. H.
(1979). Television form, content attributes, and viewer behavior. In M. J. Voight & G. J. Hanneman (Eds.), Progress in communication sciences (pp. 51-90). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
64.
Watt, J. H.
, & Meadowcroft, J. M. (1990, June). Age-related differences in children's attention span components: Harmonic models of television viewing. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, Dublin, Ireland.
65.
Welch, A.
, & Watt, J. H. (1982). Visual complexity and young children's learning from television. Human Communication Research, 8, 133-145.
66.
Wickens, C. D.
(1980). The structure of attentional resources. In R. Nickerson (Ed.), Attention and Performance VIII (pp. 239-257). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
67.
Wickens, C. D.
(1984). Processing resources in attention. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention (pp. 63-102). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
