Annotated
Bibliography
Cognition and mass media
by Alayne Moody
November 21, 2001
Beagles-Roos, J., & Gat, I. (1983). Specific impact of radio and television on children’s story comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 128-137.
Children retold television stories using vague terms (i.e., pronouns instead of names). Recounted radio stories included more information.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
Describes his theory that intelligence comes in many forms. The seven types of intelligence are linguistic (reading), logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, musical (auditory), interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
Greenfield, P. (1972). Oral or written language: The consequences for cognitive development in Africa, the United States and England. Language and Speech, 15, 169-178.
The author looks at the cognitive development of speakers of unwritten versus speakers of written languages. She finds that people in literate cultures develop abstract thinking and the concept of different points of view of reality. A reduction in oral complexity to graphic simplicity. (Paraphrased from annotated bibliography found on the Web at http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/patches40/ErrataForLinguaLinksLibrary40/BibliographyOfSpokenAndWritten.htm)
Greenfield, P. M. (1984). Mind and media. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
A history of media development from the psychological perspective. Greenfield discusses the cognitive processes stimulated or required by different types of media. For example, television watching results in a learned verbal style of speaking in vague terms, as if facing someone. Imagination might be more activated by radio. This book details a study in which children were asked to give endings to stories experienced via radio or television. Children who completed radio stories produced more "novel" endings than did children who completed television stories.
Greenfield, P., & Beagles-Roos, J. (1988). Radio vs. television: The cognitive impact on children of different socioeconomic and ethnic groups. Journal of Communication, 38(2), 31-92.
Children had better verbal information recall of radio stories, but they had better visual, action and general recall of television stories.
Harris, R. J. (1989). A cognitive psychology of mass communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Harris explains from a cognitive perspective how the media shape consumers’ perceptions of reality, resulting in a mentally constructed reality that he says differs significantly from objective reality. The author suggests that radio has more in common with print than with television because radio and print are verbal media while television incorporates a pictorial element. Skills for extracting information from television are different from those for print or radio.
Kelly, H. (1981). Reasoning about realities: Children’s evaluations of television and books. In H. Kelly & H. Gardner (Eds.), Viewing children through television. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Children recognize at an early age that books are fiction. Television, on the other hand, is more often confused with reality.
Krugman, H. E. (1971). Brain wave measures of media involvement. Journal of Advertising Research, 11, 3-9.
Under experimental conditions, brain wave activity during reading was greater than during television-watching.
McLuhan, M. (1964.) Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Discusses sensory, cognitive, psychological, and social effects of literacy.
Olson, D. R. (Ed.). (1974). Media and symbols: The forms of expression, communication and education. 73rd Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
A collection of studies and essays relating to media and learning.
Pezdek, K., Lehrer, A., & Simon, S. (1983). The relationship between reading and cognitive processing of television and radio. Child Development, 55, 2072-2082.
Research shows a positive correlation between comprehension of a story read and one heard on radio, but not between a story read and one seen on television.
Pinker, S. (Lecturer), & DiNozzi, R. (Director). (2000). How the mind works [videorecording]. Los Angeles: Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Steven Pinker -- Professor of Psychology, Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, and author of the book How the Mind Works -- talks about cognitive neuroscience in a humorous and animated manner. Touches on how the human mind evolved and enabled our ancestors to solve important problems.
Salomon, G. (1994). Interaction of media, cognition, and learning. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The author looks at the symbolic systems of various media, particularly visual media, to see how they relate to cognition, learning, and skill cultivation. One goal is to understand how media can be best used for educational purposes. Computer media are explored as well as television and film.
Salomon, G. (1997). Of mind and media: how culture's symbolic forms affect learning and thinking. Phi Delta Kappan, 78, 375-80.
The author examines the relationships between the mind and the media as they pertain to education. He asserts that media's symbolic forms influence receivers’ interpretations, mental capacities, and perceptions of the world. He discusses implications for educational technology and describes how representations of the same information on different media can differ.
Sanders, R. E. (1987). Cognitive foundations of calculated speech: Controlling understandings in coversation and persuasion. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Compares the value of television visuals, either alone or accompanied by copy, with audio-only and text-only media messages to see how well each medium conveys nonverbal and "utterable" cues.
Trejo, L. J., & Bradshaw, G. (1998). Internet Psychology Lab. Accessed October 10, 2001, from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Web site: http://kahuna.psych.uiuc.edu/ipl/
This Web site provides multimedia, interactive instruction in psychology, including cognition, memory, learning, visual and auditory perception. The site contains lessons, demonstrations, and experiments to help the user grasp psychological concepts in an experimental setting.
Veltrusky, J. (1976). Some aspects of the pictorial sign. In L. Matejka & I. Titunik (Eds.), Semiotics of Art (pp. 245-264). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Visuals have affective qualities. They express perceptions and feelings through the use of color, brightness, space relations, texture, and shape. Also, behavioral representations such slumped, closed, and up-turning stimulate cognitive interpretations.
Weinstein, S., Appel, V., & Weinstein, C. (1980). Brain-activity responses to magazine and television advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 20(3), 57-63.
This experimental study showed that magazine ads generated more brain-wave activity than television advertising. In addition, magazine ads stimulated left-brain activity. Better brand recall correlated to higher brain activity.