Effects of time of day and medium of presentation on immediate recall of violent and non‐violent news

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Abstract
A sample of 103 subjects from a technical training college were randomly assigned to nine groups and presented with a sequence of violent and non‐violent news stories either audiovisually (via television), in audio‐only, or in print at three different times of day (morning—9.30 am, early afternoon—1.30 pm, and later afternoon—5.30 pm). Subjects were tested for immediate cued recall of story content immediately after presentation. There were significant main effects of presentation modality, time of day and news content. Memory for news was best from print and worst from the audiovisual presentation. Memory performance was best in the morning and worst in the evening. Violent news was recalled better than non‐violent news in all media and at all times of day. There were also some interactions. Recall of violent news presented in audiovisual and audio‐only modalities deteriorated more from morning to afternoon than did non‐violent news recall. Non‐violent news recall from these two media declined more rapidly in the second half of the day. With print, recall of both violent and non‐violent news dropped off more in the late afternoon than in the morning. Practical implications of the findings for news presentation are discussed.