The Evening's Bad News: Effects of Compelling Negative Television News Images on Memory

This study examined the relationship between compelling negative images in television news and memory for information in the stories. Memory differences were found before, during, and after the presence of negative compelling images. Memory was worse for material that preceded the negative scenes. During negative scenes, memory was worse for semantically intact audio information such as speech than for nonsemantic aural information such as screams or crashing noises. Memory for visual material presented after compelling negative images was better than memory for material presented before compelling negative images. Results are discussed in relation to retroactive inhibition and proactive facilitation of memory, and in relation to theories about the effects of emotion in cognitive processing.

[1]  William Rybolt,et al.  The Attention Factor in Recalling Network Television News , 1983 .

[2]  G. Salomon.  Interaction of media, cognition and learning , 1979 .

[3]  Dan G. Drew,et al.  Learning From a Television News Story , 1980 .

[4]  D. Graber.  Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide , 1984 .

[5]  Elizabeth F. Loftus,et al.  Memory for traumatic events , 1987 .

[6]  Ellen Wartella,et al.  Increasing Learning from TV News , 1982 .

[7]  Thomas J. Housel.  Understanding and Recall of TV News , 1984 .

[8]  P. Lang.  The Cognitive Psychophysiology of Emotion , 2019, Anxiety and the Anxiety Disorders.

[9]  Daniel G Bobrow,et al.  On data-limited and resource-limited processes , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[10]  R. Goldstein,et al.  Attention to television: intrastimulus effects of movement and scene changes on alpha variation over time. , 1985, The International journal of neuroscience.

[11]  W. Russell Neuman,et al.  Patterns of Recall Among Television News Viewers , 1976 .

[12]  Nightly Horrors: Crisis Coverage by Television Network News , 1985 .

[13]  Peter Pringle,et al.  Visualization and TV news information gain , 1976 .

[14]  Mickie Edwardson,et al.  Television news information gain from interesting video vs. talking heads , 1981 .

[15]  John P. Robinson,et al.  The Main Source: Learning from Television News , 1986 .

[16]  B. Reeves,et al.  Emotional Television Scenes and Hemispheric Specialization. , 1989 .

[17]  William R. Hazard.  On the impact of television's pictured news , 1962 .

[18]  J. A. McGeoch.  Forgetting and the law of disuse. , 1932 .

[19]  Stephen D. Reese,et al.  Children's Learning from a Television Newscast , 1984 .

[20]  B. Reeves,et al.  Theories About News and Theories About Cognition , 1989 .

[21]  Doris A. Graber,et al.  Content and Meaning , 1989 .

[22]  Drew O. McDaniel,et al.  Film's Presumed Advantages in Presenting Television News , 1973 .

[23]  Thomas Grimes,et al.  Audio-Visual Redundancy and TV News Recall , 1987 .

[24]  J. Gibson.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1979 .

[25]  Elihu Katz,et al.  Remembering the News: What the Picture Adds to Recall , 1977 .

[26]  Olle Findahl,et al.  Some characteristics of news memory and comprehension , 1985 .

[27]  Colin Berry.  Learning from television news: A critique of the research , 1983 .

[28]  Barrie Gunter,et al.  Remembering Television News: Effects of Picture Content , 1980 .

[29]  A. Newell.  Unified Theories of Cognition , 1990 .

[30]  N. Frijda.  The laws of emotion. , 1988, The American psychologist.

[31]  Alan Booth.  THE RECALL OF NEWS ITEMS , 1970 .