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As the US migrates to digital radio, broadcasters are making important decisions about the transmission rates they use on primary and secondary audio channels. One way to evaluate coders at different bit rates is to elicit consumers' opinions of the audio quality. However, it is evident from several lines of research that consumers' preferences do not always match their ability to process information efficiency. Therefore when evaluating coders at low bit-rates it is important to measure consumer's processing efficiency as well as examining their preferences. With regard to audio, past research has shown that degraded speech, including speech masked with noise and synthetic speech, impairs individuals' ability to recall content. The current research explores whether speech coded at very low bit rates (i.e., 9 kbps and 24 kbps) also impairs consumers' memory for text passages. Concurrently, we examine people's subjective ratings to see whether these ratings correlated with our objective recall measure. Results suggest that participants' recall of information dropped significantly at 9 kbps, a finding which has important implications for broadcasters. Participants' audio quality ratings did not correlate with their ability to remember story details, supporting the notion that merely asking consumers to rate the quality of a signal may not provide a complete picture of how impaired audio will affect their behavior. However, interestingly, their professed level of interest, comprehension, and enjoyment with the story did correlate with their memory scores, making these questions better candidates for subjective tests of very low bit rate coders.

The effect of video and photograph reinstatement on 18-month-olds' recall was assessed in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, children learned to produce novel actions in a laboratory playroom, then returned 2 weeks later to either reenact the activities or watch a videotape of the actions. They were tested 10 weeks after reinstatement. Although children who had reenacted activities produced a substantial number of actions, children who watched a video presentation produced no more actions at test than children who had not watched the video. In Experiment 2, children watched a reminder video in the laboratory after 10 weeks and were tested either 15 min or 2 weeks later. Children in both groups showed evidence of reinstatement, but recall was significantly greater when testing was conducted 15 min after reinstatement. In Experiment 3, 10 weeks after training children either watched a reinstatement video or saw photographs of the event in their homes. They were tested 24 hr later in the laboratory. Effects of ...

Two experiments examined the effects of postevent information on 18-month-olds’ event memory. Experiment 1 ( N =60) explored whether children’s memory was reinstated when action information was eliminated from the reinstatement and only object information was introduced. Experiment 2 ( N =48) examined children’s recall when either (a) information about the objects’ target actions was replaced with new action information or (b) the original training objects were replaced with new objects. In an elicited-imitation paradigm, children were trained to perform six target actions, watched a video reinstatement 10 weeks later, and were tested for recall 24 h after reinstatement. Two results were found. First, a video reminder eliminating action information reinstated children’s memory as effectively as a video containing object and action information. Second, children were reminded of their past training when during reinstatement action information was preserved and new objects were presented but were not reminded when object information was preserved and new actions were presented.

Four experiments examined (1) whether reenactment improves 18-month-olds' event memory, (2) how effects of reenactment are affected by the time at which the reenactment occurs, (3) whether timing of reenactment affects recall over very long periods of time, and (4) how partial reenactment affects recall. Children were trained to perform 8 novel activities in a laboratory playroom, returned to the playroom 15 min to 8 weeks later to reenact the activities, and were tested for recall of the original activities 6 to 8 weeks after reenactment. Results indicate that reenactment improves toddlers' event memory (Experiment 1); reenactment is more effective after a time delay (Experiment 2); effects of timing of reenactment are even more pronounced after a 6 month delay (Experiment 3); and reenacting half of the activities is just as effective as reenacting all of the activities (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that reenacting events or parts of events can remind very young children of past experiences and inoculate against forgetting over very long periods of time.

Toddlers of 14 and 18 months learned to produce target actions for six activities, were allowed to forget their training, and were reminded of the activities 8 or 10 weeks later, depending on their age. Reminders were administered in a memory-reactivation paradigm in which toddlers were shown the target actions of three of the six activities but were not allowed to imitate the modelled actions. Toddlers were tested for their recall of all six activities 24 hours after the reactivation treatment. Toddlers who were passively exposed to three activities during the reactivation session recalled more activities than controls who either were not reminded or did not originally engage in the activities. This study reveals that 14- and 18-month-olds encode components of an event associatively and that they are able to remember seemingly forgotten components through passive re-exposure to other components of the event.

Radio is migrating to digital transmission, expanding its offerings to include captioning for individuals with hearing loss. Text display radio requires a large amount of word throughput with minimal screen display area, making good user interface design crucial to its success. In two experiments, we presented hearing, hard-of-hearing, and deaf consumers with National Public Radio stories converted to text and examined their preferences for and reactions to midsized and small radio text displays. We focused on physical display attributes such as text color, font style, line length, and scrolling type as well as emergency alert messages and emergency prompts for drivers, announcer identification schemes, and synchronization of audio and text. Results suggest that midsized, Global Positioning System (GPS)-style displays were well liked, synchronization of audio and text was important to comprehension and retrieval of story details, identification of announcers was served best with a combination of name change in parenthesis and color change, and a mixture of color and flashing symbols was preferred for emergency alerting.