This study investigated the relaaudio-visual communications, Califortionships between the reading comprenia State Polytechnic College, Kellogghension and intelligence of junior high Voorhis Campus, Pomona, California. school students and their use of the This paper is based upon his doctoral mass communication media. Robert M. dissertation completed at the UniverSekerak is head of the department of sity of Southern California.

THE ASSUMPTION THAT HUMAN BEHAVIOR is "motivated" is common Workers in such diverse fields as education, advertising, and politics stress the importance of analyzing men's motives and the value of devising ways to utilize motives to foster desired changes in behavior The notion of motivation seems so intuitively obvious that questioning its scientific or practical utility would appear temerarious Yet Cofer, in a critical review of recent literature on motivation, concludes that, "if present trends continue, motivation as a distinct concept, coordinate to other psychological concepts, may well disappear (3:194)" Irwin, however, in a comparable review only two years later, while agreeing "on the nearly useless status of the word 'motivation' " cannot agree with these diognoses and prognoses (11) The non-psychologist may well be surprised by the lack of agreement among psychologists on a concept that seems obvious and that is an integral part of common-sense psychology Such disagreements cannot comfortably be dismissed as scientific games; they have arisen as psychologists have attempted to make sense out of an enormous array of experimental data Hopefully stated, the experimentation and theorizing that will eventuate in an attempt to resolve these disagreements will result in more comprehensive explanations of human behavior Should the journeyman construct "motivation" disappear from the

background

Mass communication media, reading comprehension, and intelligence

Motivation and the communication processes

THE pervasiveness of the mass media of communication is a theme which comes to the fore as one takes up recent research in the area. Chapin's compilation (15) of U. S. mass media statistics, for example, overwhelmed the reader with its reports of ever larger audiences, growing numbers of mass communication agencies, and increasing advertising budgets. If such reports were not convincing, the investigator could have gone to the trade press. There he would regularly have been informed about the number of individuals using the mass media "yesterday." At the beginning of 1958, for example, sampling indicated that 98,118,600 adults read a newspaper each day; 37,537,000 read a magazine; 89,074,000 looked at television; 73,464,000 listened to radio. Besides that, 39,128,000 went to the movies during the week (11) . Increasingly, every national state was getting a full diet' of mass communications. More than a quarter-billion newspapers were circulated in the world each day; there were 257 million radio sets, and in the neighborhood of 50 million television sets (94). And while Hollywood long thought in terms of tens of millions of movie-goers, China began to report it had hundreds of millions seeing its Communist film fare (39) . That the rest of the world will continue to become more like the United States—in quantity at least—was indicated by Lerner (50) . Studying mass media systems on a global basis, he noted that the trend was inexorably from oral communications systems to media systems. As literacy, urbanization, and political participation increased—and they continued to do so without interruption—so did the mass media. What was mass communications research like in this time of growth? A good share was of the kind used in this introduction—the assembling of descriptive materials. But there were also studies of content and effects, and even experimental projects under laboratory conditions. Especially, communications research became quantitative, as Schramm (80) noted, and it took all the mass media into consideration in a communication setting. Often, it was practical and applied. But now and again it was theoretical. Above all, it gave attention to the complexities of the process of communication.

Chapter VIII: The Mass Media: Journalism, Broadcasting:

compilation (15) of U. S. mass media statistics, for example, overwhelmed the reader with its reports of ever larger audiences, growing numbers of mass communication agencies, and increasing advertising budgets. If such reports were not convincing, the investigator could have gone to the trade press. There he would regularly have been informed about the number of individuals using the mass media "yesterday." At the beginning of 1958, for example, sampling indicated that 98,118,600 adults read a newspaper each day; 37,537,000 read a magazine; 89,074,000 looked at television; 73,464,000 listened to radio. Besides that, 39,128,000 went to the movies during the week (11). Increasingly, every national state was getting a full diet of mass communications. More than a quarter-billion newspapers were circulated in the world each day; there were 257 million radio sets, and in the neighborhood of 50 million television sets (94). And while Hollywood long thought in terms of tens of millions of movie-goers, China began to report it had hundreds of millions seeing its Communist film fare (39). That the rest of the world will continue to become more like the United States-in quantity at least-was indicated by Lerner (50). Studying mass media systems on a global basis, he noted that the trend was inexorably from oral communications systems to media systems. As literacy, urbanization, and political participation increased-and they continued to do so without interruption-so did the mass media. What was mass communications research like in this time of growth? A

Mass communication media, reading comprehension, and intelligence

Citations

Motivation and the communication processes

Chapter VIII: The Mass Media: Journalism, Broadcasting:

The Mass Media: Journalism, Broadcasting

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