EFFECTS OF HUMOROUS ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS

Written educational selections and cartoons drawn to illustrate different educational points were arranged to effect a factorial variation in (1) level of difficulty of educational material (easy, difficult) and (2) amount of humor (no humor, moderate humor, extensive humor). Students read one version, evaluated it on a number of dimensions, and were tested over the material. Pictorial humorous illustrations were found to have no effect on information acquisition and on motivation, positive effects on appeal, and negative effects on persuasibility.     

Presence and television.

Film and a number of emerging entertainment technologies offer media consumers an illusion of nonmediation known as presence. To investigate the possibility that television can evoke presence, 65 undergraduate students were shown brief examples of rapid point‐of‐view movement from commercially available videotapes on a television with either a small screen (12 inches [30.5 cm], measured diagonally) or a large screen (46 inches [116.8 cm]). Participants' responses were measured via a questionnaire and a computer‐based recording of arousal (electrodermal activity). Viewers of both televisions reported an enjoyable sense of physical movement, excitement, involvement, and a sense of participation. Furthermore, as predicted, participants who watched the large screen television thought the movement in the scenes was faster, experienced a greater sense of physical movement, enjoyed the movement to a greater extent, found the viewing experience more exciting, and were more physiologically aroused. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Is there an Ethics of Computing?

ABSTRACT  The article constitutes an attempt to answer the question contained in the title, by reference to three example topics: individual privacy, ownership of software, and computer 'hacking'. The ethical question is approached via the legal one of whether special, computer–specific legislation is appropriate. The conclusion is in the affirmative, and rests on the claim that computer technology has brought with it, not so much the potential for committing totally new kinds of crimes, as a distinctive set of linguistic and conceptual apparatus which makes it necessary to describe computer–related activity in special ways.