Enhancing memory of television commercials through message spacing.

Abstract

Examined the effects of message repetition, message spacing lag time, and measurement delay on memory for TV commercials among 413 older and younger adults (aged 62–83 yrs vs 20–35 yrs). Results show that in the long measurement delay condition, the recall of message contents was significantly higher with the long lag time than with the short lag time. However, in the short measurement delay condition, recall was significantly higher with the short lag time than with the long lag time. The effect of lag in forestalling memory decay appeared to be similar for both older and younger Ss. Results are interpreted based on a variation of encoding variability theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)