CMN 140

Gray matter

Where computation happens and where there is approximately 1B neurons

White matter

How information is transmitted, approximately 5T neurons

Ralf Schmalzle

Brain is the biological organ of communication

The software

Brain gives rise to the mind, which can be understood as a unified collection of software programs

Some programs are innate

Capacity for language

Some programs are learned

English language

Hydrocephalus

Water on the brain, missing white matter is replaced by fluid. Congenital disease. Many patients lead normal healthy lives. Displays that the mind/brain is remarkably robust

Stroke

Blood supply to part of your brain is interrupted/reduced. Can lead to speech/motor deficits (Broca’s Aphasia). Takeaway is that some psychological processes can be localized

Brain regions

Very few brain regions are for one specific psychological process. Higher order processes (video games) need distributed brain network

What does the mind have to do with mass communication

Our minds process media and understanding media processing gives us insight into the consequences (good and bad) of media use

Automatic routines

Sequences of learned behaviors that are enacted with little effort

Automaticity

Mental state where our minds operate without the perception of conscious effort

Automaticity applied

LaRose, 2010. Habits are formed, habits are automatically reactivated. media use exists along a continuum: volitional control to habitual

Social Cognitive Theory

Bandura, 1989. Mind has the capacity to learn by observing others. This means we can learn by observing mediated others. Basis for media effects research

Attention as a “spotlight”

Attention can be widely focused or can be narrowly focused. Narrow focus enhances one object at the expense of others

The Media Equation

Reeves & Nass, 1996. Media evolve rapidly, brains do not. Psychological processes that evolved in hunter gathered humans are used for interacting with media

Twin studies

Demonstrate that media use is heritable. Such as social media use, political talk, computer use, hours TV watching, news consumption

The Adapted Mind

Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992. We actually evolved psychological programs for creating media. Think: Cave painting, oral histories, campfire stories

Narratives

Are structured, easily imaginable, illustrate relationships, utilize exemplars, are well remembered

Play and games

Tools for learning, low-cost opportunities to practice survival relevant behavior, and practice for coalition formation

Mind and brain

Tightly coupled, psychological processes are enabled by the mind. Some psychological processes are hardwired and some processes are the result of learning

Media use and attention

Media use can become habitual, things that were once volitional can become habitual

We have the capacity to learn from media (observational learning)

Attending to one thing comes at a cognitive cost to unattended things

You aren’t as good at multitasking as you think

Media and learning

Media hijack our evolutionary old brain (startle response)

We are evolutionary hardwired for media (learning through play)

We tend to learn particularly well from narratives

How we engage media

Very automatic ways, it takes deliberate, conscious effort to apply media literacy skills

Physical exposure

Physically exposed to the media. Necessary but not sufficient condition for media exposure, this does not mean we process the message. The message and the person occupy the same physical space for some period of time so that exposure to the media message is possible

Perceptual exposure

Received through visual/auditory senses. Media message falls within a person’s bandwidth of visual and/or auditory perception

Perception is mediated by physical constraints: RGB sensitive cones in the eye and 16Hz-20,000Hz frequency range (1,000Hz-4,000Hz is preferred)

Laurel or Yanny

Acoustically ambiguous, low quality recording

Primary information in the message is weak or degraded: makes meaning more ambiguous

Brain is looking for meaning

PhD student filtered out all the sound above the frequency 4.5kHz, some people are more sensitive to higher/lower frequencies, depending on what frequencies are filtered out, you can hear Laurel or Yanny

Encoding

Think short-term memory

Storage

Think long term memory

Retrieval

When we draw on a memory for further processing

Central

Careful conscious evaluation

Peripheral

Heuristic or unconscious processing

Children as a special audience

Children undergo a number of developmental milestones, these milestones are linked to specific age ranges, and characteristics of those developmental milestones shape the way children understand media

Sensorimotor stage

0-2 years old

Preoperational stage

2-7 years old

Concrete operational stage

7-11 years old

Formal operational stage

12+ years old

Children and educational TV

TV is still the dominant form of media among children when learning about science

Despite parents showing their children science programming, parents don’t expect that children learn very much from the programming

Children “learn” from anthropomorphic TV programs, but they do not apply the facts learned to the real world

Three stages of moral development (Kohlberg)

Pre-conventional stage

Conventional stage

Post conventional stage

Pre conventional stage

2-7 years old, children depend on authority. Child’s conscious is external

Conventional stage

Early adolescence, children begin to develop their own conscious and can internalize right from wrong

Post conventional stage

Middle adolescence, social conscious > rigid moral rules

Have smartphones destroyed a generation?

Jean M. Twenge. Data shows that teens are hanging out with friends less, dating less, not in a rush to drive, and have less sex

Association between adolescent well being and digital technology use

Association found between digital technology use and adolescents well being is negative but small, explaining at most 0.4% of the variation in well being. Taking the broader context of that data into account suggests that these effects are too small to warrant policy change

Media and processing

Much of our message processing happens automatically

The way we perceive media biases the way we process messages

If I perceive messages different from you, then what I experience as a result of media use will be different from what you experience

Media industries target audience based on these different perception

Media and developmental stages

Developmental stages constrain our media experiences.

Depending on what developmental stage a child is in will constrain what they can learn from a message

Three building blocks of media literacy

Skills

Knowledge structures

Personal locus

Skills

Analysis

Evaluation

Grouping

Induction

Deduction

Synthesis

Abstraction

Analysis

Breaking down of a message into meaningful elements

Evaluation

Judging the value of an element

Grouping

Determining which elements are alike in some way, then determining how a group of elements are different from other groups of elements

Induction

Inferring a pattern across a small set of elements, then generalizing the pattern to all the elements in a larger set

Deduction

Using general principles to explain particulars, typically with the use of syllogistic reasoning

Synthesis

Assembling of information elements into a new structure to reveal new relationships among the elements

Abstraction

Creates a brief, clear, and accurate description capturing essence of a message in a significantly smaller number of words than the message itself

Knowledge structures

Sets of organized information in your memory

Message

Composed of two kinds of information: factual and social

Facts

Discrete bits of information, such as names, dates, title

Social information

Composed of accepted beliefs that cannot be verified by authorities in the same way factual information can be

Personal Locus

Composed of goals and drives. The goals shape information processing tasks by determining what gets filtered in and what gets ignored

Media literacy

Set of perspectives that we actively use when we expose ourselves to the mass media to process and interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter

Emotional dimension of media literacy

Focuses our attention on how we perceive the feelings of people in media messages and how we read our own feelings as they are trigged by those media exposures. Which lives in the heart

Aesthetic dimension of media literacy

Focuses our attention on the art and craft exhibit in the production of media messages. Which resides in our eyes and ears

Moral dimension of media literacy

Focuses our attention on values. Moral information as that which resides in your conscience or your soul

Cognitive dimension of media literacy

Focuses our attention on factual information, dates, names, etc. Information as that which resides in the brain

Acquiring fundamentals

First year of life. Learning that there are human beings and other physical things apart from one’s self

Language acquisition

Years 2 and 3. Recognize speech sounds and attach meaning to them

Narrative acquisition

Years 3 to 5. Developing understanding of differences and understanding how to connect plot elements

Developing skepticism

5 to 9. Sharpen differences between likes and dislikes for shows, characters, and actions

Intensive development

Have a strong motivation to seek out information on certain topics, develop a detailed set of information on particular topics

Experiential exploring

Seek out different forms of content and narrative; focus on searching and surprises

Critical appreciation

Accept messages on their own terms then evaluate them within that sphere, have the ability to construct a summary judgment about the overall strengths and weaknesses of a message

Social responsibility

Take a moral stand that certain messages are more constructive for society than others, this is a multidimensional perspective based on a thorough analysis of the media landscape

Advantage of developing a higher degree of media literacy

Appetite for Wider Variety of Media Messages

More Self Programming of Mental Codes

More Control over Media

Mass communication

Outdated conceptualization that the media send messages to a mass audience in a one way flow with no feedback

Mass audience

Outdated conceptualization of the media audience as being a very large mass with no social organization or interaction among audience members, who are heterogenous, anonymous, and interchangeable

Niche audience

Relatively small audience that is defined by a special shared interest or need

Geographic segmentation

Identifying a niche audience by where its members live and shop

Social class segmentation

Identifying a niche audience by the level of their social class, such as lower class, middle class, and upper class

Geodemographic segmentation

Identifying niche audiences by a combination of where people live and their demographic characteristics

Psychographic segmentation

Identifying a marketing niche by the audience’s psychological and lifestyle characteristics

Attracting audiences

Appeal to existing needs and interests

Cross-media and cross-vehicle promotion

Cross vehicle promotion

Advertisers place messages in different vehicles in order to reach a wider variety of potential customers

Cross media promotion

Advertisers place messages in different media in order to reach a wider variety of potential customers

Audience conditioning

Strategy used by media organizations to make their existing audience members what to continually expose themselves to their subsequent messages

Information processing tasks

Sequence of tasks that include filtering media messages, meaning matching, and meaning construction

Filtering

Information processing task in which people continually make decisions about filtering out media messages or filtering them in

Meaning matching

Information processing task in which we engage in a process of recognizing elements in a media message and automatically access our memory to find the meanings we have memorized for those elements

Meaning construction

Information processing task in which we engage in a process of creating our own meaning for a media message: this process is usually engaged when we have no denoted meaning already residing in our memory or when the denoted meaning does not satisfy our current needs

Exposure

Condition of being in proximity to a message, having the message occur within our perceptual abilities, and leave some impression in our minds

Attention

Exposure to a media message that takes place in the attentional state; conscious awareness of the media message

Psychological exposure

Media message that creates a trace element in a person’s mind

Automatic exposure state

Experience of being exposed to a media message without being aware of the message

Attentional exposure state

Experience of being aware of a media message and actively processing its information while being exposed to the message

Transported exposure state

Experience of being exposed to a media message and being swept away by it into a different place and time so that you lose sense of your current physical surroundings and current point in time

Self reflexive exposure state

Experience of being exposed to a media message with a high degree of awareness of the media message as well as a high awareness of standing apart from the message while analyzing it

Field independency

Natural ability to distinguish between the signal and the noise in any message where the noise is the chaos of symbols and images while the signal is the information that emerges from the chaos

Crystalline intelliegence

Ability to memorize facts as well as the facility to absorb the images, definitions, opinions, and agendas of others

Fluid intelligence

Ability to be creative, make leaps of insight, and perceive things in a fresh and novel manner

Conceptual differentiation

Ability to classify objects into a large number of mutually exclusive categoriesA