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The article presents information about the usage of video display terminals (VDT) in teaching basic journalism skills. The teachers detected that copy produced by students on terminal screens is often better grammatically than stories composed in typewriters and scribbled over by editors. No extensive data comparison has been undertaken yet to substantiate these indications. But subtle psychological pressures may force students at terminals to be more word conscious, more attentive to clarity of expression. The machines demand concentration and careful work. As the fledgling journalists follow cursors across their screens, they are obliged to look closely at each word. Consequently, they may be alert to misspellings, faulty punctuation, style errors, redundancies, awkward syntax-all the mistakes that bedevil the beginner.

A display evaluative tool called the "Analytic Profile System" (APS) was developed and tested. The scorable factors included in the APS are based on the results of a multidimensional scaling of the display-observer interface. The technique itself rests on forced-choice methods and is held to possess acceptable psychometric characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An effort was made to identify the processes governing the monitoring of complex visual displays. The independent variables of primary interest were the relative frequency of relevant and irrelevant signals (R/I frequency) and time on watch. Detection latency, β2, and α4 were inversely related to R/I frequency, and detection latency was an erratic function of time on watch. The latter function reflected the temporal variability of detection latency and was particularly evident under low ft/I frequency. The results were interpreted in terms of a four-process model of complex monitoring, the processes being attention, decision, memory, and scanning. The detection latency data support the thesis that scanning is governed by the reinforcement efficacy of relevant signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on the use of an on-line, video-display computer system in medical research. Although batch processing may be adequate for some computer applications such as the preparation of scheduled reports, an on-line computer system is needed to enable the research physician or medical scientist to readily interrogate, edit, and reorganize his data. In such a computer system, the man-machine interface may best be provided by an input-output device such as a teletypewriter or video-display terminal. The video-display or cathode-ray tube terminal offers certain advantages over the teletypewriter.

The article presents information about the adoption of automated printing and video display terminals by daily newspapers in the United States.