The limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing: looking to the future

Sex Does Not Sell: The Effect of Sexual Content on Advertisement Effectiveness and Interference with Memory for Program Information

Does increasing the sexual content of advertisements lead, though memory processes, to greater sales? By employing a between-participants design, we aimed to explore how sexual advertising affects explicit and implicit memory, and whether it impairs memory for information preceding the commercials (retroactive interference) or following the commercials (proactive interference). We randomly assigned 182 young participants in the UK to one of two groups who watched the same TV program containing an advertisement break during which either sexual or nonsexual advertisements were shown, while brands were held constant across conditions. Participants were then tested on their explicit and implicit memory for both the advertising content and program information. Results revealed that implicit memory was better for nonsexual than for sexual advertisements. Unexpectedly, there was no group difference in participants' explicit memory for the advertisements. Further, sexual advertising resulted in retroactive interference with program information, whereas proactive memory for program information was not impaired. We acknowledge various study limitations and discuss proposals for future research.

The Accuracy and Precision of Measurement

Measurement noise differs by instrument and limits the validity and reliability of findings. Researchers collecting reaction time data introduce noise in the form of response time latency from hardware and software, even when collecting data on standardized computer-based experimental equipment. Reaction time is a measure with broad application for studying cognitive processing in communication research that is vulnerable to response latency noise. In this study, we utilized an Arduino microcontroller to generate a ground truth value of average response time latency in Asteroid Impact, an open source, naturalistic, experimental video game stimulus. We tested if response time latency differed across computer operating system, software, and trial modality. Here we show that reaction time measurements collected using Asteroid Impact were susceptible to response latency variability on par with other response-latency measuring software tests. These results demonstrate that Asteroid Impact is a valid and reliable stimulus for measuring reaction time data. Moreover, we provide researchers with a low-cost and open-source tool for evaluating response time latency in their own labs. Our results highlight the importance of validating measurement tools and support the philosophy of contributing methodological improvements in communication science.

Sex Does Not Sell: Effects of Sexual Advertising Parameters on Women Viewers' Implicit and Explicit Recall of Ads and Brands

This study investigated implicit and explicit memory effects of sexual and non-sexual advertisements embedded in either a sexual or non-sexual program among women viewers. We predicted that sexual appeals would facilitate implicit memory for the brand, and we explored whether program-type (sexual or non-sexual) and its associated congruity would impact or moderate recall of the surrounding advertisement among a small sample (n = 52) of exclusively women advertisement viewers. Sexual (versus non-sexual) advertising led to significantly worse implicit memory for the brand logo but better explicit recall for the advertisement scene itself. There was no effect of sexual appeals on explicit brand name recall, and no significant effect on advertisement recall of the program type. There was a significant interaction effect for program type and advertisement type for explicit recall of the advertisement scene, in which program-type moderated sexual advertisement recall. These results suggest that sexual advertising may increase memory for the advertisement at the expense of recalling the brand advertised. Limitations and implications of this study are discussed.

Message-Elicited Brain Response Moderates the Relationship Between Opportunities for Exposure to Anti-Smoking Messages and Message Recall

Campaign success is contingent on adequate exposure; however, exposure opportunities (e.g., ad reach/frequency) are imperfect predictors of message recall. We hypothesized that the exposure-recall relationship would be contingent on message processing. We tested moderation hypotheses using 3 data sets pertinent to "The Real Cost" anti-smoking campaign: past 30-day ad recall from a rolling national survey of adolescents aged 13-17 (n = 5,110); ad-specific target rating points (TRPs), measuring ad reach and frequency; and ad-elicited response in brain regions implicated in social processing and memory encoding, from a separate adolescent sample aged 14-17 (n = 40). Average ad-level brain activation in these regions moderates the relationship between national TRPs and large-scale recall (p < .001), such that the positive exposure-recall relationship is more strongly observed for ads that elicit high levels of social processing and memory encoding in the brain. Findings advance communication theory by demonstrating conditional exposure effects, contingent on social and memory processes in the brain.