Schedule for week  Today – Dual mode presentation, ELM and HSM.  Wednesday – Finish up ELM and HSM and review for the mid-term.

Ways to reduce cognitive load  Reduce extrinsic cognitive load  Avoid redundancy unless necessary  Use worked examples  Use visuals if possible  Use perspectives of maps  Avoid split attention  Use dual mode if possible

Dual Mode Presentation  Don’t require one sense to attend to more than one source of information.  For example, use audio combined with visual rather than text with a visual.

Application  Assess the following video in terms of cost versus benefit or any other theory we have worked with.  It is not enough to say it is good or bad, you must say why, and if bad, how you would improve it.

Focus on  Use of concrete words  Use of analogies  Explanation of “jargon”

Jargon  Technical words that make sense to someone other than your target audience.

Presentation  ELM or HSM

Summary – ELM and HSM  Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion  Heuristic-Systematic Model of Persuasion

ELM  2 routes for what to do with incoming information – central and peripheral

Central route  Pre-requisite for elaboration – able and willing to process.

Willing (Motivated)  Personal relevance (important to that person.)  Satisfies the WIIFM principle

WIIFM Principle  What’s In It For Me  A good design is one that advertises the benefit for staying involved – to the intended audience.

Message Utility Hypothesis  In an environment with a lot of stimuli (information) we will pay attention to that which is most useful to us at that time and place.

Able  Not just intellectual or educational level.  Distracting environment

Elaboration

Cognitive processing  Unfavorable thoughts  Favorable thoughts  Neutral thoughts

Attitude Shift  Enduring  Resistant to change  Predicts behavior

Peripheral Route  In ELM, still a conscious thought process  However, no processing of the information content is involved.

Heuristics  Short cuts, cues, clues.  Based on past experience

Appearance  Attractive  Not attractive

Expertness

Other factors  Number of arguments  Perception of character  Anything from existing schema that tells you that the information should be accepted or rejected.

Attitude Shift  Not resistant to change  Not long-lasting  Not predictive of behavior

We want our audiences to elaborate!

ELM versus HSM  Both have a central and peripheral route.  The peripheral route in HSM only includes heuristics.  The peripheral route in ELM can include non-conscious cues, such as repeated exposure.

What should we take away?  Still based on perception of and actual cost versus benefit.  We can make it easier for them to be able to process if we apply dual coding theory, use existing schemas as starting places and keep cognitive load low.

What else?  Don’t use weak arguments – they make people disagree with your points.  When preparing, assume people will process on both routes, so dress nicely and use strong arguments.  Assume people will only gather information until they are satisfied, so make sure your first arguments are the most important.