Remembering Television News: Effects of Picture Content

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Abstract
Thirty male undergraduate student volunteers from the Department of Psychology, North East London Polytechnic were presented with a sequence of 15 brief television news items recorded on videotape from actual network newscasts under two conditions: (a) video modality (sound plus visuals) or (b) audio modality (soundtrack only). The items were visually differentiated into three categories: “film-clip” items, “still-inserts” items and “no-inserts” items. In a test of free recall for these news items immediately following presentation, “film-clip” items and “still-inserts” items were recalled significantly more often in the video modality than “no-inserts” items, but not in the audio modality. The findings suggested that news-item recall can be affected by picture content and it is argued that picture items may inhibit learning of nonpictorial items.

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