Methodology: Self-report, The Self-Assessment Mannequin (SAM), autonomic functions: facial electromyographic (EMG) activity (a measurement of muscle movement), heart rate and skin conductance

- Little research undertaken, little funding available, most research is undertaken by advertisers

- In undertaking comparative studies between viewers and non-viewers, had to find latter

- When preliminary findings that TV contributed to hypnotic, non-learning, advertisers stopped research

- Youth: Research shows that better students watch less, as viewing goes up, academic standing goes down, youth spend more time watching TV than they do in school

- Children spend more time in front of TV than in school

- Research on relationship of reading and TV viewing: displaces leisure reading and thus inhibits the growth of reading skills; requires less mental effort than reading; may shorten the time children are willing to spend on finding an answer to intellectual problems they are set to solve; has particularly negative effects for heavy viewers, socially advantaged children, and intelligent children, concern is when learning and reading habits haven’t yet been established in first years of age

- Children learn by doing and repetition: heavy diet of vicarious viewing that replaces real sensory involvement is directly antagonistic to the most basic principles of a young child's learning. Much early development of physical and mental skills—and of their foundations in the brain—comes from experimenting and solving problems with real-world materials

- Attentional inertia: the longer a look at TV continues, the greater the probability it will be maintained, i.e. "glued" to the set during a program, the more likely he is to remain fixated when the scene breaks to a commercial

Emotion "A significant primitive response for which the brain is specialized is emotion. From a biological perspective, emotions are neurophysiological circuits in the brain that regulate approach and avoidance by engaging neural pathways associated with each. The influence of emotions, however, is not confined to primitive circuits in the brain. Emotions play an important role in a range of behaviors, including attention, memory, perception, and physical action, and they can be expressed behaviorally, linguistically, and physiologically."

- Most research about mediated communication and emotion has concentrated on the effects of media content

- The similarity between mediated and unmediated experience is the basis for the successful application of psychological theories about emotion to the pictures and words that can only represent experiences and phenomena not actually present. It is possible to do things with pictures that have no counterpart in natural experience, and these special properties of pictures could potentially change emotional response

Persuasion: manipulation of the human mind without the manipulated party being aware of what caused shift in thought or opinion. Basis of persuasion is to access the right brain. (Left side of brain is analytical and rational, right side is creative and imaginative). So idea is to distract left brain and keep it busy, caused shift from beta awareness to alpha. So when in altered state, you transfer into the right brain which results in the internal release of brain opiates, e.g. endorphins, i.e. it feels good and you want to experience more, politicians, lawyers, advertisers, religious leaders, television uses this

- Research shows that majority of our cognitive ability may be non-conscious

- higher levels of more passive alpha while watching television and higher levels of fast-wave beta activity during reading

- "You raise kids on sweets, they become addicted to sweets. You raise kids on alpha, they get addicted to alpha, just like any hypnotic state," The brain is programmed to repeat the same experience; neurons learn to replicate a pattern, that's how people learn, but we don't realize that what we are really learning is habits

- Electroencephalogram and the lack of movement of the viewer's eyes indicate a state of inattention, of sleepiness, of semi-hypnosis (usually any viewer enters this state in about half a minute). Viewer's state of sleepiness is well known among image directors. That is why they always produce images that are in constant movement: if an image would stay frozen for some time, the viewer would tend to fall asleep

- when watching TV right brain activity outnumbered left brain activity 2 to 1, i.e. viewers were in altered state

- when in alpha state, 25 to 200 more times suggestible

Manipulations of "arousal mechanisms" that separate brain and body - advertisers and programming provide carefully planned manipulations separating the natural responses of brain and body: TV is physiologically arousing, studies sponsored by advertisers have suggested the best way to get viewers to pay attention to their messages is to capitalize on the brain's instinctive responses to danger, involuntary responses, E.G. brains respond to movement as if it were actually present, causing the nervous system to prepare for a physical response, yet the impulse has no outlet; "salient" features such as bright colors, quick movements, or sudden noises get attention fast, since brains are programmed to be extremely sensitive to such changes that might signal danger, although the viewer's attention is alerted, there is no need for physical action. Researchers soon began to suggest that children thus stimulated, without natural physical outlets for the pent-up response, might develop overactivity, frustration, or irritability

"…The human brain is not specialized to deal with 20th-century media. There is no neural function or anatomical region designed to help humans differentiate mediated and unmediated experience and to change mental processing accordingly. People are certainly capable of telling the difference between a picture and real life, but this is a thoughtful response, and it is preceded and constrained by responses that are automatic and not unique to media….

- TRY THIS: The image doesn't become sharper if the viewer approaches the screen, unlike what happens with common objects.

- TRY THIS: Compare also our visual sharpness as we look at a tree at a certain distance, seeing the leaves distinctively; if a tree is entirely focused by the TV camera, the leaves cannot be distinguished on the screen

- Constant changing of images and the necessary excitement of emotions (resources used for preventing the viewer from passing from the normal state of sleepiness to that of deep sleep), results in that everything transmitted by television has to be transformed into a show. Postman calls the attention to the fact that, as a consequence, almost everything in life became a show: politics, religion, education, etc.. People got so much used to the TV show format that they don't accept nor tolerate other more cultural, simpler and calmer forms of activity, having the impression that they are boring

- A cut is defined as a shift from one visual scene to a completely different scene. Pacing is defined as the number of cuts in a message

Techniques

- Neuro-linguistic Programming: links between neurological activity and linguistics, techniques kept

- Interspersal Technique: idea is to say one thing with words but plant a subconscious impression of something else in minds of listener/viewer – emphasize right word and use proper hand gestures on key word, visualizations at key moment (e.g. insurance salesperson – imagine your house on fire),

- Vibrato: tremulous effect imparted in some vocal or instrument music, cycle per second range causes people to go into altered state of consciousness

- Shock and confusion techniques : people withdraw go into alpha state, e.g. dilated eyes, when in shock for security and thus highly suggestible, distract left brain and communicate with right brain

- Subliminal Programming: audio suggestions, hidden behind music, visual suggestions airbrushed or incorporated into picture or design, or words/images flashed on screen so fast you don’t consciously see them

- ELFs – Extra-Low Frequency waves inaudible electromagnetic in nature, used to communicate with submarines, goes through metal

- Neurophone: an electronic instrument that can successfully program suggestions directly through contact with the skin which contains more sensors for heat, touch, pain, vibration and electrical fields than any other part of human body

- Voiceroll: patterned, monotonous, paced style of speaking, used by hypnotists to induce trance, similar to beat of a metronome

Motion

The difference between moving and still pictures also has been manipulated. The fact that the brain has specialized nerve cells to process motion supports the idea that motion perception is critical to understanding the world. The repertory of motions possible within the frame of a film or television presentation sets them apart from other artistic forms of representation. 3 types of motion in filmic presentations: Primary motion is event motion in front of the camera, that is, the movement of objects within the frame (e.g., a flag waving in the breeze). Secondary motion is camera motion, movement of the frame relative to objects within it (e.g., pans, dollies, and zooms). Tertiary motion is the sense of motion induced by a sequence of shots (i.e., editing). It is well known that these different types of motion affect the viewers' subjective experience of the presentation. In general, film theorists believe that movement on the screen is engaging for the viewer."

- Although organizational and industrial psychologists have conducted ergonomic studies on the nature of video-display terminals (VDTs) in the workplace, not much attention has been paid to the physical characteristics of video displays in the home.

- Virtually everything that we know about the effects of television is based on research that uses, or assumes, that people are watching on standard 19" sets. The overall size, as well as the variability of size, of video-display systems has been increasing at a rapid pace.

- The best summary of prior research is that larger image sizes indeed can intensify viewers' evaluations of content. The explanation for this effect, however, is unknown. One explanation for the effects could be that a larger screen creates a better opportunity for people to respond to the images as natural experience by making the images more vivid. Events appraised as real elicit emotions, and their intensity corresponds to the degree to which they appear real.

E.g. Talk shows: like advertising and entertainment programming - address real needs but do not fulfill those needs. Talk shows respond to the need for a public forum on issues of common concern, but, like traditional news formats, they fail to connect personal experience with the larger socioeconomic context. Therefore, they cannot help individuals understand their own lives in relation to the social, political, and economic forces that shape them. The TV therapist has come to replace the expert (or political official) as the voice of wisdom. Talk shows speak with a therapeutic language that examines only a privatized landscape of human experience, further rupturing individual needs from collective solutions. Instead of understanding and knowledge, television talk offers its viewers the voyeuristic pleasure of gazing into the private lives of society's victims. In essence, television's therapeutic discourse prevents the public from understanding social issues and participating in the answers to social problems.'

E.g. Negative News: One reason proposed for this emphasis on negatively valenced news is that news programmes now have to compete with entertainment programmes for their audience (infotainment), and do so by emphasizing emotionally relevant material such as crime, war, famine, etc., at the expense of more positive material. TV and film material can provoke marked changes in mood, and can be easily adapted as a way of experimentally generating negative mood. What is of additional importance is that increases in negative mood as a result of viewing a negatively valenced news bulletin were also associated with increases in the catastrophizing of personal worries. This is consistent with those theories of worry that implicate negative mood as a causal factor in facilitating worrisome thought. The effects of negatively valenced news bulletins and TV programmes. Not only are such programmes likely to adversely affect mood, but they are also likely to exacerbate an individual's personal worries and anxieties. Intuitively, one might expect that news items reflecting war, famine and poverty might induce viewers to ruminate on such topics. However, the effect of negatively valenced news appears to be much broader than that - it can exacerbate a range of personal concerns not specifically relevant to the content of the programme itself.

Krugman, H.E., Brain wave measures of media involvement. Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 11, No. 1, Feb. 1971, pgs. 3-9.

Walker, J. Changes in EEG rhythms during television viewing: preliminary comparisons with reading and other tasks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51, 1980, pgs. 255-261.

Emery, Merrelyn, The Social and Neurophysiological Effects of Television and their Implications for Marketing Practice. Doctoral dissertation. Australian National University. Canberra, 1985; 

Nelson, Joyce, The Perfect Machine (New Society Pub: 1992).

Moore, Wes, Television: Opiate of the Masses, http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/5jcl/5JCL59.htm 

Postman, Neil, (1994), The Disappearance of Childhood, Vintage Books ISBN: 0679751661

Anderson, Robin, (1995), Consumer Culture and TV Programming, Westview Press:  Boulder, CO

Watch TV, get a workout: staring at the box can be good exercise (Physiological effects of television watching) British Columbia Report. Vancouver: Aug 5, 1996.Vol.7, Iss. 49; pg. 27