Miscomprehension Rates for Prescription Drug Advertisements

Abstract A study of 1509 individuals assessed the degree to which television and magazine advertisements for two fictitious drugs were miscomprehended. About 5 to 14 percent of the open-ended responses were mistaken impressions about the products, many reflecting inaccurate interpretations of the advertising messages. The pictorial aspects of the ad appeared to have generated many of these mistaken beliefs. As measured by true-false tests, 17 to 20 percent of the questions measuring intended copy points were answered incorrectly, although 28 to 36 percent of the questions were answered by a “don't know” response. Analyses of the individual questions indicate that incorrect interpretations of the ad were influenced by commonly held misconceptions. Differences in directions that increased attention paid to the ad, compared to other editorial material, decreased incorrect responses as measured by the true-false test but increased the percentage of open-ended incorrect statements about the product. It is poss...

[1]  J. E. Russo,et al.  Identifying Misleading Advertising , 1981 .

[2]  Tony M. Dubitsky,et al.  Remembering implied advertising claims as facts: Extensions to the "real world" , 1980 .

[3]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Communication modality as a determinant of message persuasiveness and message comprehensibility. , 1976 .

[4]  Richard Staelin,et al.  The Information Processing of Pictures in Print Advertisements , 1983 .

[5]  Perry W. Thorndyke,et al.  The role of inferences in discourse comprehension , 1976 .

[6]  P. Wright.  The Cognitive Processes Mediating Acceptance of Advertising , 1973 .

[7]  Richard Jackson Harris,et al.  Psychology of Pragmatic Implication: Information Processing Between the Lines. , 1978 .

[8]  A. Greenwald.  6 – Cognitive Learning, Cognitive Response to Persuasion, and Attitude Change1 , 1968 .

[9]  John R. Anderson,et al.  Elaborative encoding as an explanation of levels of processing , 1982 .

[10]  A. Greenwald,et al.  Audience Involvement in Advertising: Four Levels , 1984 .

[11]  A. Paivio.  Mental imagery in associative learning and memory , 1969 .

[12]  Wayne D. Hoyer,et al.  Correcting Corrective Advertising , 1981 .

[13]  Jacob Jacoby,et al.  To Read, View, or Listen? A Cross-Media Comparison of Comprehension , 2012 .

[14]  D. G. Morrison,et al.  Measuring Miscomprehension for Televised Communications Using True-False Questions , 1983 .

[15]  E. Kozminsky,et al.  Altering comprehension: The effect of biasing titles on text comprehension , 1977, Memory & cognition.

[16]  Viewer Miscomprehension of Televised Communication: Selected Findings , 1982 .

[17]  Richard F. Yalch,et al.  Viewer Miscomprehension of Televised Communication—A Comment , 1982 .

[18]  John R. Anderson,et al.  A partial resolution of the paradox of interference: The role of integrating knowledge , 1980, Cognitive Psychology.

[19]  N. S. Johnson,et al.  Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[20]  Terry L. Childers,et al.  Conditions for a Picture-Superiority Effect on Consumer Memory , 1984 .

[21]  Viewer Miscomprehension Findings are Measurement Bound , 1982 .

[22]  Kathy A. Lutz,et al.  Effects of interactive imagery on learning: Application to advertising. , 1977 .