Science / Medicine : TV Linked to Memory, Radio to Imagination

A UCLA study of how children respond to stories on television and radio indicates that TV is better for the memory but radio is a more powerful stimulus for the imagination. Psychologists Patricia Greenfield and Jessica Beagles-Roos performed a series of tests on 192 schoolchildren using two stories--an African folk tale and an Italian tale--presenting both in a television and a radio form. Some children heard the tales first on radio, the others on television.

“There was evidence . . . that radio or audio was more powerful as a stimulus to the imagination while material presented in an audio-visual or television format was more memorable. The presence of dynamic visual images seemed to be a detriment to the imagination but a boon to the memory,” the researchers reported.

What surprised them, the researchers said, was “that whatever the cognitive process--imagination or memory--it was enhanced when a child listened to the audio version before watching the audio-visual version and diminished when the later preceded the former.”

The researchers said they wanted to test the 1965 theory of Marshall McLuhan that “the medium is the message” and subsequent studies about the effects of each medium.