The cognitive effects of medium, expertise, and mental effort on retrieval and elaboration of news information.

Theories of human information processing are used to examine differential learning of the same material presented by television and newspapers. An experiment was conducted to assess the effects of medium (television vs. newspapers), expertise (expert vs. novice), and cognitive effort (high vs. low) on recognition and recall of news information. Assuming that more cognitive effort would be exerted for exposure to newspapers compared to exposure to television news, it was hypothesized that more elaborated learning would occur for exposure to newspapers, more cognitive effort, and higher expertise, and that this would be best measured by free recall. One hundred and seventy-seven subjects from a major midwestern university were randomly assigned to television or newspaper presentations of one political and one economic news story. They then answered either recognition or free recall questions about the either recognition or free recall questions about the stories. Subjects were post-tested for expertise and cognitive effort, and were grouped into high-low groups for analysis. In line with general expectations, better performance was observed for experts, for high cognitive effort groups, and for newspaper exposure groups compared with their counterparts exposed to television news. However, contrary to expectations, subjects reported exerting more cognitive effort for exposure to television news than exposure to newspapers, and elaborated learning was reflected in the recognition measure as well as (and sometimes even better than) the free recall measure. Based on the obtained results, it is suggested that different types of learning may be occurring for different groups.PhDCommunicationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104165/1/9500982.pdfDescription of 9500982.pdf : Restricted to UM users only