1985/01/01 by Byron Reeves, Esther Thorson, Michael Rothschild +3 · 176 citations
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Alpha (finance) #Audiology #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Cognitive psychology #Communication #Covert #Developmental psychology #Media Influence and Health #Movement (music) #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Psychology #Psychometrics #Stimulus (psychology) #Vigilance (psychology)
paper · doi:10.3109/00207458509149770
published in International Journal of Neuroscience 27(3-4), 241-255 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 1985/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07
Central and occipital EEG alpha were used as an on-line measure of momentary changes in covert attention during television viewing. Alpha was recorded during nine 30-second commercials shown embedded in a half-hour situation comedy. Two time series were constructed for data analysis. A stimulus series consisted of codes representing the presence or absence of scene changes or person and object movement for each half-second interval of the commercials. The alpha series consisted of median alpha scores for each half-second interval, aggregated across 26 subjects. The alpha series was regressed on the movement and scene change series, both of which produced significant increments in R, even after autocorrelational effects inherent in the alpha series were removed. As a validity check on the attentional interpretation of alpha, it was shown that mean alpha for each commercial was significantly (negatively) correlated with recall and recognition of commercial contents. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for further use of continuously-recorded alpha in research on factors that influence attention to television.