Reduced prefrontal and temporal processing and recall of high “sensation value” ads
Introduction
Public service announcements (PSAs) are non-commercial broadcast ads intended to modify public behavior. Televised PSAs are at the core of many public health campaigns. When effective, PSAs carry a great public health benefit (Biener et al., 2000, Emery et al., 2007), however, not all are (Wakefield et al., 2006). The lack of reliable, quantitative and objective means of ad evaluation is one of the impediments to better PSA outcomes. Integrating conceptual contributions from the communication theory with experimental neuroscience methods could provide objective and quantitative measures of PSA evaluation and facilitate targeted ad design.
Prior functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (fMRI) studies of commercial advertising examined the brain response to specific components of ads, such as popular commercial logos. (Erk et al., 2002, McClure et al., 2004). This approach provides information on the public perception of existing consumer brands but not the fundamental issue of the neurophysiologic and behavioral impact of the format in which ad's message is presented.
“Message sensation value” (MSV), is a validated, rater-derived variable of message format that may affect PSA impact and outcomes (Harrington et al., 2003, Palmgreen et al., 1991, Petty and Cacioppo, 1986, Stephenson and Southwell, 2006). MSV reflects the intensity of audio, visual, and content features of PSAs that elicit sensory, affective, and arousal responses (Morgan, 2003, Palmgreen et al., 2002). Higher MSV in anti-smoking PSAs has been associated with increased subjective efficacy in some but not all studies (D'Silva and Palmgreen, 2007, Helme et al., 2007); however, the dose–response relationship and the generalizability of this effect have not been established. Similar approaches are used in commercial advertising, with the sensory salience of ads often outpacing the message.
This empirical strategy assumes that engaging the stimulus-driven, exogenous attention system (i.e. “buying the eyeballs”, (Chattopadhyay and Laborie, 2005, Russell and Belch, 2005)), increases cognitive processing of the content. Contrary to this assumption, experimental brain imaging data on “divided attention” and post-exposure PSA outcome measures suggest that high MSV strategies do not invariably translate to learning or subsequent behavior change (Indovina and Macaluso, 2007, Kang et al., 2006). Moreover, some studies suggest that stimuli engaging the exogenous attention system may be associated with less learning, recall (Hahn et al., 2006, Uncapher and Rugg, 2005), and prefrontal and temporal activity (Foerde et al., 2006) than those engaging the internally regulated endogenous attention system.
Tobacco use is one of the gravest preventable public health problems worldwide (IOM, 2007) and a target of a large number of PSAs, making the anti-tobacco PSAs representative of the public health PSAs genre (Ibrahim and Glantz, 2007, Wakefield et al., 2005). Our primary objective was to characterize the brain systems sensitive to MSV, the key theoretical concept of public health communications thus making the first step toward the integration of the communications theory and experimental neuroscience. We hypothesized that compared to the high MSV (hiMSV) PSA, the low MSV (loMSV) PSA will produce greater BOLD fMRI signal in the brain regions mediating attention and memory, while the hiMSV PSA will produce greater activation in the brain regions mediating visual processing than the loMSV PSA. Our secondary objective was to demonstrate the brain systems activated during the viewing of a 30-second long PSA. We hypothesized that PSA will produce greater BOLD fMRI signal in the brain regions mediating attention and memory, than non-PSA neutral video segments (NV).
Section snippets
Methods
Study protocol was approved by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board. The participants were 18 regular smokers (M = 13 cigarettes per day, SD = 5.14), 18 to 48 years old (M = 23, SD = 7; 15M; 3F), recruited through advertising. Mean nicotine dependence level (Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (Pomerleau et al., 1994) was 2.17, SD = 1.89 (on a scale of 1 to 10).
Ninety-nine 30-second long PSAs targeting adult smokers (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA) produced prior
Behavioral
Participants denied having seen any of the PSA prior to the study. PSA frames were more accurately recognized than NV frames, t(17) = 3.96, p < 0.001. There was no difference in response time between PSA and NV frames, t(17) = 0.72, p = 0.48. LoMSV PSA frames were more accurately recognized than hiMSV PSA frames t(17) = 2.59, p = 0.019, and response time was shorter for loMSV frames than hiMSV frames t(17) = − 2.74, p = 0.014. A summary of the accuracy and response time statistics is reported in Table 1.
Imaging
Discussion
Using anti-tobacco PSAs as a model, we provide first evidence for differences in regional brain activation and recall as a function of ad format. As predicted in our primary hypothesis, the hiMSV PSAs produced less recognition than the loMSV PSAs. This behavioral indication of reduced cognitive processing of the content of the hiMSV PSAs is further supported by the corresponding imaging data; the hiMSV PSAs were associated with extensive activation in the occipital (including the fusiform
Acknowledgments
Supported by grants P50CA095856, CA/DAP6005186, DA015746-01, DA024419 and CA/DAP5084718 from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
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