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nils holmberg

Nils Holmberg

Senior lecturer

nils holmberg

Children's attention management on commercial websites: Effects of task type and advert prominence

Author

  • Nils Holmberg

Summary, in English

This experiment was designed to investigate how children cope with salient online advertising while engaging in task-oriented website interaction. 57 children in 3rd grade (9-year-olds) participated in the experiment. Each participant was introduced to a mock-up website and was instructed to solve two types of online tasks: reading for comprehension and information search. The web pages used by the children contained both task-relevant textual information as well as task-irrelevant online display advertising. The adverts were presented in two saliency conditions: static and animated. Eye movement data were used to differentiate task types in terms of cognitive load, and to construct an advert distraction measure. Pupil dilation data were used to measure children's cognitive load and fixation location data were used to measure attentional advert distraction. The results of the study showed that animated online adverts caused increases in both task-related cognitive load and advert-related fixations compared to static adverts. However, the results also showed that children's level of advert distraction differed between task types, such that advert distraction was higher during task types associated with lower cognitive load (reading for comprehension). The results are discussed in relation to existing cognitive load theory, as well as current media and communication research.

Department/s

  • Department of Strategic Communication

Publishing year

2017-12-23

Language

English

Pages

153-154

Publication/Series

Journal of Eye Movement Research

Volume

10

Issue

6

Document type

Conference paper: abstract

Publisher

European Group for Eye Movement Research

Topic

  • Applied Psychology

Keywords

  • eye-tracking

Conference name

19th European Conference on Eye Movements

Conference date

2017-08-20 - 2017-08-24

Conference place

Wuppertal, Germany

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1995-8692