Sounds Exciting!!: The Effects of Auditory Complexity on Listeners' Attitudes and Memory for Radio Promotional Announcements

This experiment tested the ability of a limited-capacity model of cognition to predict listener reactions to changes in the structural complexity of radio promotional announcements. Past research shows that certain auditory structural features cause listeners to automatically allocate cognitive resources to message encoding. This study shows that increasing the number of such features in promos leads to better recognition, free recall, delayed free recall, and more positive attitudes about promos and the stations that produce them.

[1]  Justin Miller The broadcasters’ stand: A question of fair trial and free information* , 1956 .

[2]  J. Deutsch Perception and Communication , 1958, Nature.

[3]  F. Graham Chapter 5 – Habituation and Dishabituation of Responses1 Innervated by the Autonomic Nervous System , 1973 .

[4]  P. Tannenbaum The Entertainment Functions of Television , 1980 .

[5]  D. Pearl,et al.  Television and behavior : ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties , 1982 .

[6]  Eugene B. Zechmeister,et al.  Human memory, an introduction to research and theory , 1982 .

[7]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  The Effects of Involvement on Responses to Argument Quantity and Quality: Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion , 1984 .

[8]  William G. Christ The Construct of Arousal in Communication Research , 1985 .

[9]  R. Lutz Affective and cognitive antecedents of attitude toward the ad : A conceptual framework , 1985 .

[10]  Franziska Marquart,et al.  Communication and persuasion : central and peripheral routes to attitude change , 1988 .

[11]  James G. Webster,et al.  Ratings Analysis: Theory and Practice , 1991 .

[12]  T. Grimes,et al.  Mild auditory-visual dissonance in television news may exceed viewer attentional capacity , 1991 .

[13]  Michael E. Gerhard Effects of Headlines and Recaps on Radio News Learning , 1992 .

[14]  E. Thorson,et al.  The Effects of Television Videographics and Lecture Familiarity on Adult Cardiac Orienting Responses and Memory , 1992 .

[15]  Annie Lang,et al.  The Effects of Related and Unrelated Cuts on Television Viewers' Attention, Processing Capacity, and Memory , 1993 .

[16]  James R. Walker,et al.  Catchy, yes, but does it work?: The impact of broadcast network promotion frequency and type on program success , 1993 .

[17]  M. Bradley,et al.  Looking at pictures: affective, facial, visceral, and behavioral reactions. , 1993, Psychophysiology.

[18]  Subgenre radio formats: The case of music‐intensive religious stations , 1995 .

[19]  Jon D. Morris Observations: SAM: The Self-Assessment Manikin An Efficient Cross-Cultural Measurement Of Emotional Response 1 , 1995 .

[20]  Annie Lang,et al.  Defining Audio/Video Redundancy From a Limited- Capacity Information Processing Perspective , 1995 .

[21]  Qingwen Dong,et al.  The Effects of Emotional Arousal and Valence on Television Viewers' Cognitive Capacity and Memory. , 1995 .

[22]  Elizabeth M. Perse,et al.  Sensation Seeking and the Use of Television for Arousal. , 1996 .

[23]  Duke Benadom Forward , 1996, Nursing standard (Royal College of Nursing (Great Britain) : 1987).

[24]  Byron Reeves,et al.  Negative video as structure: Emotion, attention, capacity, and memory , 1996 .

[25]  S. Eastman,et al.  Accelerating the flow: A transition effect in programming theory? , 1997 .

[26]  Rick W. Busselle,et al.  Reporting rape: The impact of relationships & names on radio listener judgments , 1997 .

[27]  M. Bradley,et al.  Motivated attention: Affect, activation, and action. , 1997 .

[28]  Jonathan David Tankel,et al.  Reconceptualizing call‐in talk radio as listening , 1998 .

[29]  Annie Lang,et al.  The effects of arousal on liking and believability of commercials , 1998 .

[30]  R. Simons,et al.  Roll ‘em!: The effects of picture motion on emotional responses , 1998 .

[31]  Annie Lang,et al.  Something for Nothing: Is Visual Encoding Automatic? , 1999 .

[32]  Annie Lang,et al.  The effects of production pacing and arousing content on the information processing of television messages , 1999 .

[33]  S. Eastman,et al.  Hitting promotion hard: A network response to channel surfing and new competition , 1999 .

[34]  Annie Lang,et al.  The Effects of Edits on Arousal, Attention, and Memory for Television Messages: When an Edit Is an Edit Can an Edit Be Too Much? , 2000 .