The Effects of Television Videographics and Lecture Familiarity on Adult Cardiac Orienting Responses and Memory

This study outlines a psychophysiological model of the role of orienting responses (ORs) in learning from televised lectures. ORs are involuntary responses to environmental stimuli that are novel or that signal the occurrence of something meaningful in the environment. In the present study, ORs were indexed with phasic decelerative heart-rate patterns. The experiment demonstrates that insertion of videographics in talking-head lectures produces ORs in television viewers. It also demonstrates that if lectures contain familiar and therefore easier material for viewers to remember, the ORs enhance learning, but if the lectures contain unfamiliar and therefore more difficult material to remember, the ORs interfere with learning. These results extend the idea that attention to television exhibits limited attentional capacity and suggests that there is a trade-off between people's ability to attend to structural and informational aspects of the television stimulus.