Investigating the impact of television advertisement image quality on telepresence, attitude towards brands and purchase intentions

In an experiment manipulating the image quality of television ads, 127 participants watched television commercials in either high or low image quality. The participants rated each ad for their attitude towards the ad and purchase intentions. Additionally, sensations of telepresence and transportation were assessed. The participants who viewed the ads in higher image quality reported more positive attitudes towards the brands, and higher levels of telepresence. The implications are discussed

Presence and Image Quality: The Case of High-Definition Television

Previous research has demonstrated that form variables can increase television viewers\u27 sense of presence. The current broadcasting of high-definition television (HDTV) programming makes testing this relation between form and presence possible in a new context, image quality. In this experiment, television viewers watched either HDTV or standard-definition television images and then rated their viewing experience on a pencil-and-paper questionnaire. The results demonstrate that HDTV provided viewers with a greater sense of presence than the current standard, thus providing empirical evidence for the claim that improved image quality will lead to television viewers\u27 experiencing presence. Additionally, the results suggest that with the coming of HDTV, sensations of presence will be both stronger and more common

Perceived Source Credibility of Local Television News: The Impact of Television Form and Presence

An increasing number of local news stations are producing and broadcasting their newscasts in high-definition television (HDTV), but to date there has not been an investigation of audience perceptions of news in high definition. This study presents the results from an experiment investigating the influence of television form (image quality and field of view) on presence and audiences\u27 perceptions of source credibility for news anchors and local news. The results demonstrate that improved image quality (HDTV) has a positive influence on audience perceptions of source credibility and the overall credibility of newscasts. Implications are discussed

On the Equivalence of Quadratic APN Functions

Establishing the CCZ-equivalence of a pair of APN functions is generally quite difficult. In some cases, when seeking to show that a putative new infinite family of APN functions is CCZ inequivalent to an already known family, we rely on computer calculation for small values of n. In this paper we present a method to prove the inequivalence of quadratic APN functions with the Gold functions. Our main result is that a quadratic function is CCZ-equivalent to an APN Gold function if and only if it is EA-equivalent to that Gold function. As an application of this result, we prove that a trinomial family of APN functions that exist on finite fields of order 2^n where n = 2 mod 4 are CCZ inequivalent to the Gold functions. The proof relies on some knowledge of the automorphism group of a code associated with such a function.Comment: 13 p

The Dueling Influences on Stigma toward Mental Illness: Effects of Interpersonal Familiarity and Stigmatizing Mediated Portrayals of Mental Illness on Attitudes

Popular media is both a common source for information about mental illness and notorious for its disproportionately negative and violent portrayals of those with mental illness. This research undertook an experiment (N = 92) to explore the competing influences of mass communication messages and interpersonal familiarity/ experience with people with mental illness on stigmatizing attitudes toward the mentally ill. Results demonstrate that exposure to negative, violent mediated portrayals of the mentally ill increase stigmatizing attitudes toward the mentally ill, while exposure to positive, sympathetic portrayals of the mentally ill relates to less stigmatizing attitudes toward the mentally ill. Greater interpersonal familiarity with those with mental illness was related to less stigmatizing attitudes toward the mentally ill regardless of viewing condition. Transportation and presence experienced while viewing the narratives with mental illness portrayals was proposed as a contributing mechanism behind adopting story consistent beliefs, but it was not related to adopting narrative consistent attitudes

Non-positivity of Groenewold operators

A central feature in the Hilbert space formulation of classical mechanics is the quantisation of classical Liouville densities, leading to what may be termed term Groenewold operators. We investigate the spectra of the Groenewold operators that correspond to Gaussian and to certain uniform Liouville densities. We show that when the classical coordinate-momentum uncertainty product falls below Heisenberg's limit, the Groenewold operators in the Gaussian case develop negative eigenvalues and eigenvalues larger than 1. However, in the uniform case, negative eigenvalues are shown to persist for arbitrarily large values of the classical uncertainty product.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letter

Acute psychiatric in-patients tested for HIV status: a clinical profile

No Abstract.South African Psychiatry Review Vol. 10 (2) 2007: pp.83-8

Profiling Vendor Performance

Giving a single wholesaler virtually all of the Knox College Library's firm orders, in return for promises of better delivery and discount, necessitated a change in the method of evaluating wholesaler performance. Unable to compare our vendor with his competitors, we instead attempted to profile the vendor's performance, coding the firm orders by response time in weeks and then arranging them by accounts (or subject areas) and by publishers. This method allowed us to identify specific strengths and weaknesses in our vendor's stock and to determine how well he could serve the particular needs of the library. About thirty-six hundred orders in twenty-nine accounts (or subject areas) and forty trade and academic publishers were analyzed, with the results indicating that, despite the vendor's claims for the comprehensiveness of his stock, in fact, only 40 to 50 percent of our orders could be filled from his stock, and, furthermore, his performance with regard to both subjects and publishers varied as much as 50 percent. The findings suggest that order periods should be shortened from twenty or twenty-four weeks to sixteen or twelve weeks to encourage delivery and that a vendor's performances with specific subjects and publishers should be considered before placing orders

“What I Love about Technology”: Older Adults and Mobile Communication Technologies

In a series of in-depth interviews, ten older adults described their use and experience with mobile technologies (e.g., E-readers and tablets). The results reveal that while older adults may not be leaders in new technology adoption, they do utilize mobile technology when they find it useful. The participants expressed both satisfaction and some frustration with their mobile devices. Participants suggested that the devices allowed them to partake in behaviors they might not be able to otherwise enjoy for a variety of physical and social reasons

Revisiting the use of secondary task reaction time measures in telepresence research: exploring the role of immersion and attention

In this experimental study, we use secondary task reaction time (STRT) to measure Attention to a media presentation and compare STRT to traditional self-report measures of Telepresence (immersion, social reality, spatial presence, and transportation) and enjoyment. Further, we compare the STRT measure with the composite items of Telepresence–Immersion. The results indicate that STRT may be useful for measuring some sub-dimensions of Telepresence. Implications are discussed