Papers engage attention, memory: study
AUCKLAND: A group of neuroscientists have tapped into the brains of Kiwis to find out how they respond to reading a newspaper.
Conducted by Neuro Insight Australia, the research saw a group of 120 New Zealanders don lycra caps fitted with felt sensors placed strategically on different points of the skull to measure cognitive function as they read the paper or watched television.
The sensors picked up tiny electrical signals made when the brain’s 100 billion neurons communicated during the experiment.
Neuro Insight chairman Prof Richard Silberstein took particular interest in which hemisphere of the brain was activated at different times during the study, explaining that the leftbrain hemisphere had a bias for remembering detailed information, while the right side processed ‘‘global features’’ such as soundtracks, the underlying emotion in someone’s voice or a picture of scenery.
By tracking the responses in the respective hemispheres, Prof Silberstein was able to get a sense of when the brain’s memorystoring function kicked into gear.
This is important because the things we remember are the ones we are most likely to talk about or buy in a store once we finish reading the paper or watching the TV.
Memory was highly selective, Prof Silberstein said.
‘‘People don’t remember every single experience they’ve ever had in their entire life. The brain knows what is important for you and then it stores it.’’
The results showed that when people read a newspaper they were far more focused, with higher levels of emotional intensity, on both the stories and the advertising than while they were watching TV.
The combined effect of reading the paper and watching the TV had an even bigger impact on longterm memory.
‘‘Memory encoding has been validated to drive sales and behaviour change so it’s a very important measure in terms of determining [advertising] effectiveness,’’ Prof Silberstein said.
The study — commissioned by News Works, which represents New Zealand publishers including NZME — showed that when TV advertising was seen before the newspaper advertising, the newspaper’s capability to drive longterm memory encoding increased by 26%.
And if the product had a strong creative campaign running across both platforms, the longterm memory encoding increased by a startling 37%.
News Works chief executive Brian Hill said he was thrilled with the results because they confirmed what the industry had always believed.
‘‘The neuroanalytics showed that when people read a newspaper they gave their full attention to both the articles and the advertisements, and that it was therefore one of the most effective forms of advertising.’’
News Works partnered with the Marketing Association of New Zealand to host events last week in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to share the key findings from the New Zealand study with marketers and agencies.
‘‘We first became aware of the growing interest in neuroscience late last year when we learned of a UK study which had contributed towards the marketing community starting to rethink how they approach their buying of digital media,’’ Mr Hill said.
The UK study showed that people who viewed advertising on premium news sites were far more likely to store advertising in their longterm memory than when people viewed advertising on social media. — The New Zealand Herald