Glossary
Goyer's Organization of Ideas Test
The test is a measure of ability " to organize ideas in what would be considered the most meaningful way." Through the use of this test, it is possible to select groups of subjects with comparable abilities in the "organization of ideas."
In this type of organization, the communicator outlines a sequence of events leading up to the problem as a historical background against which the proposed solution is set.
This is another popular and familiar type of organization. The communicator first details the nature of the problem, and then proceeds to discuss the steps that ought to be taken to solve the problem.
In this organization, the communicator proceeds from a set of general statements to more specific materials or suggestions. The message is concluded by calling for some action, that seems to follow logically from the earlier arguments.
The studies conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus in the nineteenth century on retention have stood the test of time and are still valid. He was both the subject and the experimenter in his now classic studies on retention -learning, relearning and measuring his own ability to retain thousands of nonsense syllables. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve derives from the simple truism that the recent events have momentary advantage over the past events. But this advantage will dissipate rapidly, allowing the relative influence of the older learnings to recover spontaneously. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve(used by Miller and Campbell to predict primacy and recency effects in persuasion) is a negatively accelerated curve. We could sum it up by saying that of two associations equally strong at the moment, the older one will decay more rapidly.
Anderson Model for Opinion Change
Experiments in persuasion generally find that the greater is the advocated change in opinion, the greater is the change produced. The Anderson model further addresses these findings. It was assumed that the opinion before and after the presentation of a communication were linearly related, according to the equation
X1=X0+S(C-X0) --------Equation(1)
Where
X0 is the opinion before the presentation of the communication
X1 is the opinion after the presentation of the communication
C is the fixed point of communication
S is a coefficient of proportionality Or susceptibility of the person to communication.
Thus, the change in opinion may be written as
S(C-X0)
The greater the value of S, the greater is the change in opinion in the direction of the communication. For application of this equation, we have to consider two communications A and B, which may be given in AB or BA order. For any given initial opinion, denote the final opinion under the AB (BA) presentation order by XAB(XBA). The difference of these two final opinions is defined as the order effect. The algebraic expression for the order effect is:
XAB-XBA=SA SB (CB-CA)
Whenever the equation (1) holds, a recency effect will be obtained. The equation can also be applied to the weak-strong argument problem.