SPCH 3710
Chapter 4

I.  General ideas about perception
	A.  Perception is a "complex process by which people select, 
	organize, and interpret sensory stimulation into a meaningful 
	and coherent picture of the world" (Berleson & Steiner, 1964, 88).

	B.  The tendency for people's perception to be influenced by 
	individual factors is termed selective perception.  Selective 
	perception is an explanation used to account for the fact that 
	different people react to the same message in different ways

	C.  Factors which have been shown to affect an individual's 
	perceptions include cultural expectations, motivation, mood, 
	and attitude

II.  Perception and mass communication--research studies 
	A.  Time magazine
	B.  Carter-Ford debate (Apple, 1976)
	C.  Anti prejudice cartoons (Cooper & Jahoda, 1947)
	D.  All in the Family (Vidmar & Rokeach, 1974)

Initial attitudes, moods, motivations, and cultural expectations affect
what media users are found to perceive.

III.  Other selective processes 
	A.  Selective exposure -- receivers choose exposure to ideas 
	that reinforce and confirm already held beliefs and attitudes

	B.  Selective attention-- receivers choose to pay attention to
	ideas that reinforce and confirm already held beliefs and attitudes
	
	C.  Selective retention-- receivers remember ideas that reinforce 
	and confirm already held beliefs and attitudes

IV.  Schema theory
	A.  Schema are defined as cognitive structures "consisting of 
	organized knowledge about situations and individuals that have 
	been abstracted from prior experiences" (Graber, 1988).

	B.  Schema are used to match new ideas to previously existing 
	categories.  For instance to process and to understand news 
	stories, receivers will draw conclusions from available evidence,
	 and then try to fit the conclusions within an individualized 
	frame work which already exists for making sense of media stories.  

V.  Subliminal perception
	A.  Subliminal perception involves a theory which says that 
	people exposed to stimuli below the threshold of awareness
	would (still) be able to perceive a message.

	B.  Vicary (1957) movie inserts to sell popcorn

	C.  Byrne (1959) college students were shown the word "beef" 
	to encourage sandwich sales, but some saw the word "beer" instead

	D.  Wilson Bryan Key: 2 books --Subliminal Seduction (1972) 
	and Media Sexploitation (1976).  Ads contain hidden "SEX" 
	words ("embeds")

VI.  Automatic exposure
	A.  Automatic exposure is based on the theory that people are 
	often exposed to a media environment while doing other things 

	B.  Donohew, Nair, & Finn (1984): media users' cognitive 
	systems pay attention as needed, with attention levels varying 
	over time.

	C.  "Most media exposure is carried out in a nearly mindless 
	state" (text 69).  TV viewing, and radio use may be habitual 
	or ritualistic.  For instance, this theory says that when you 
	do homework with the radio on, you may selectively perceive 
	songs and mentally "tune out" commercials.

VII.  Conclusions
	A.  The theories in this chapter all involve an audience-focused 
	approach to studying media message understanding.  

	B.  Selective perception, selective exposure, selective attention,
	selective retention, schema theory, subliminal perception theory 
	and automatic exposure theories all take the position that the 
	audience (receiver) is an ACTIVE participant in the communication 
	process. 

	C.  Perception research acknowledges the Principle of Necessary
	Ambiguity (Fearing, 1970) which says, in order to understand 
	communication effects we must realize that "all communication 
	contents are in some degree ambiguous" and that interpretation
	is part of the process of communication.