| An information processing model of human cognitive processing was drawn from experimental psychology, and its utility in explaining media modality effects was examined. The modality examined was the visual mode and the medium--television.;The sensory register is limited in the amount of information it can process at any one point in time. The rate of information input, the number of simultaneous inputs, and the familiarity of the information all affect the ability of the sensory register to perform identification/recognition.;The form complexity of the televised image was measured. It was predicted that as the form complexity of the message increases, the ability of the sensory register to perform identification/recognition would decrease.;Sixty-nine subjects participated in an experiment in which the capacity drain at the point of identification/recognition was measured using the secondary task technique. Subjects performed two experimental tasks at the same time, and performance on one task was used to indicate capacity drain over three different difficulty levels of the other task, while performance on that second task was maintained at a set level. The results supported the prediction that increased complexity in the visual image would make the process of identification/recognition harder. This result was also interpreted to further verify the utility of the information processing model in explaining media modality effects.;The path of incoming, visual, televised information was traced through the information processing model and was seen to pass through three structures: the sensory register, working memory, and long-term memory. It was seen that early in the model, in the sensory register, the visual image is identified, and what is passed on to working and long-term memory is an identified trace and not a veridical image of what has been seen. It was proposed, therefore, that the visual image from a televised message would have its most direct effect in the sensory register at the point of identification/recognition. |
