ANALYZING EFFECTS OF FILM TRAILERS’ RHETORICAL STRUCTURES
ON COMPREHENSION AND AUDIENCE REACTIONS
____________
A Thesis
Presented
to the Faculty of
California State University, Chico
____________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
Interdisciplinary Studies
International Cognitive Visualization
____________
by
© Christina S. Bwana
Fall 2014
ANALYZING EFFECTS OF FILM TRAILERS’ RHETORICAL STRUCTURES
ON COMPREHENSION AND AUDIENCE REACTIONS
A Thesis
by
Christina Bwana
Fall 2014
APPROVED BY THE DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES
AND VICE PROVOST FOR RESEARCH:
________________________________
Eun K. Park, Ph.D.
APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE:
________________________________
Neil H. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Graduate Coordinator
________________________________
Neil H. Schwartz, Ph.D., Chair
________________________________
Erica de Vries, Ph.D. ___________________________________________ Wolfgang Schnotz, Ph.D.
PUBLICATION RIGHTS
No portion of this thesis may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner
unacceptable to the usual copyright restrictions without the written permission of the
author.
iii DEDICATION
I would like to dedicate this thesis to Kody, Kory, Mark and Mark,
true artists, true vision and true professionals.
iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my most heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Neil H. Schwartz,
research advisor, mentor and fellow avid movie watcher, who trained me in the ropes in
research, who readily agreed when I asked him not to let me provide anything but an
excellent piece of work, and whose methods of imparting his wide knowledge willingly
after making me go out and research what I could on my own built a strong independence
and confidence in a once novel researcher like myself. I also extend this heartfelt
gratitude to Dr. Wolfgang Schnotz and Dr. Erica de Vries for their individual and unique
inputs and encouragement that helped me form a stronger research project!
A special thank you to Dr. Lawrence Herringer and Dr. David Philawoer. Dr.
Herringer, who agreed to take time out of a well deserved holiday in order to sit with me,
teach me and run analysis with me. Dr. Philaower, who made statistics not only
interesting, but entertaining. The methods and analyses in this investigation would just
not have been as efficient and thorough were it not for the both of you!
An enormous thank you to Tania Leeder and the rest of the LCIRG team, without
whom I would have most likely looked like a headless chicken, running around trying to
sort out a million different things at once. Thank you for the late nights spent setting up,
taking down then re-setting up computer labs and software, and just every other way you
generously offered to help!
To my family. I always felt your warm wishes and your kind words of empathy,
even though far away! To all my friends, your prayers and support in countless different
ways leave me in awe!
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Publication Right …………………………………………………………………….
iii
Dedication …………………………………………………………………………..
iv
Acknowledgements …………………………………...……………………………..
v
List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………..
viii
List of Figures .............................................................................................................
ix
Abstract .......................................................................................................................
x
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Introduction ................................................................................................
1
Background ....................................................................................
The Present Investigation ...............................................................
1
2
Literature Review .......................................................................................
11
Introduction ....................................................................................
Defining Rhetorical Structure in Prose ..........................................
Importance of Rhetorical Structures for Comprehension ..............
Choosing a Rhetorical Structure in Prose ......................................
Investigating Rhetorical Structure in Film .....................................
11
13
15
21
26
Methodology ...............................................................................................
29
Design and Participants ................................................................
Experimental Materials ................................................................
Procedure .....................................................................................
29
29
40
Results .......................................................................................................
42
Hypotheses ..................................................................................
Rhetorical Structures and Comprehension ..................................
Rhetorical Structures and Reactions ............................................
Path Analysis ...............................................................................
42
43
44
48
vi V.
Discussion ........................................................................................................
52
Overview .......................................................................................
Narrative Structure and Comprehension .......................................
Narrative Structure and Reactions ................................................
Path Model ....................................................................................
Limitations and Implications ........................................................
52
53
56
58
59
References ..................................................................................................................
62
vii LIST OF TABLES
TABLE
PAGE
1.
Table 1 ............................................................................................................... 45
2.
Table 2 .............................................................................................................. 49
3.
Table 3 .............................................................................................................. 50
viii LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE
PAGE
1.
Figure 1 ............................................................................................................. 31
2.
Figure 2 ............................................................................................................. 46
3.
Figure 3 ............................................................................................................. 46
4.
Figure 4 ............................................................................................................. 47
5.
Figure 5 ............................................................................................................. 51
ix ABSTRACT ANALYZING EFFECTS OF FILM TRAILERS’ RHETORICAL STRUCTURES
ON COMPREHENSION AND AUDIENCE REACTIONS
by © Christina Bwana
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies
International Cognitive Visualization
California State University, Chico
Fall 2014
Research has shown that the comprehension of prose transcends modalities; that
is, text and film as forms of prose are equally understood. The factors involved in
comprehension of both text and film include the situation models of an individual, and
the rhetorical structure used by the author of the prose to convey his or her intended
meaning.
This study was designed to examine the influence of rhetorical structures of film
trailers on an audience, measured by i) the audience comprehension of the plot and theme
within a trailer, and ii) the audience reaction towards the trailer, measured by affinity
towards the trailer, viewing desire, viewing intention and intention to share the trailer.
There were four experimental conditions, which were the four rhetorical structures of a
single trailer: narrative, descriptive, original and control. Instruments to measure
comprehension and reaction were created specifically for this experiment, and analysed
x using multivariate analysis of covariance. Results showed the narrative, descriptive and
control structures, all of which were segmented into comprehensible parts within a whole
trailer, had equal influence on comprehension of plot elements. The narrative structure
had a significantly greater influence on comprehension of theme, and on affinity towards
the trailer, as compared to the other three structures. A film audience would be more
likely to understand the plots of a topic within a trailer if the trailer was segmented into
comprehensible parts, regardless of structure. A film audience would also be more likely
to comprehend the themes or higher order ideas of a trailer as intended by the author, if
the ideas at the top level of structure are presented in a linear, clear manner. Finally, the
coherent, linear structure of a film trailer is more aesthetically more pleasing to a film
audience.
xi CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Background
Research done in film marketing offers a vast amount of literature on the dynamic
role of individual differences—such as affect, feelings and emotions—in consumer
behavior—that is, the movie going experience. The foci of research done in film
marketing tend to be on which affect of the audience and which surface elements of the
film—such as actors, visual effects, references to popular culture—predict enjoyment of
the movie, and how the relationships between all these factors influence the popularity of
some genres over others (see for example Hixson, 2005; Kernan, 2004; Marich, 2005).
However, the existing literature does not provide any feedback about the interaction
between a film, the audience comprehension of contents of the film, and the audience
reaction towards the film thereafter.
Attempts led by Eliashberg and Sawhney (1994) have proposed models of the
dynamic interactions between temporary emotional moods, stable individual personality
factors, and all the emotional contents of a movie. However, existing models ignore the
additional interactions of attention, cognition and comprehension on the topic content, as
well as the emotional content which, when combined, make up the movie experience
(Tan, 2013). There is still a wide dearth of research on the relationship between the
semantic contents of a film or what the author wants to convey and an audience’s
comprehension thereof. These semantic contents of a film are organized through a
1 rhetorical structure—a rhetorical structure is defined as the spatial organization of ideas
within a prose. There is also a lack of research on the relationship between the rhetorical
structures of films that affectively convey their semantic content, and specific audience
reactions to these films. The lack of research on film trailers overall, and the dependence
on mere instinct and experience to create movie trailers, has been heavily criticized
(Hixson, 2005).
Movie trailers are one of the most important sources of information that influence
decisions on cinema attendance and predict performance of their related motion pictures
in theatres (Eliashberg & Shugan, 1997; Kernan, 2004; Marich, 2005). The focus of
research should therefore shift onto a relationship between structural characteristics of
film trailers and individual differences and reactions in audiences (Tan, 2013). The Present Investigation
This study was designed to examine the influence of rhetorical structures of film
trailers on an audience, measured by i) the audience comprehension of the plot and theme
within the trailer, as the intended meanings of the author, and ii) the audience reactions
towards the trailer. Comprehension is measured using plot and theme. We define plot as
“the sequence of individual events that progress a story from beginning to end” and
theme as “the underlying ideas that go beyond the action of the plot, revealing the intent
of the author”. Reactions towards the trailer are defined as: (a) affinity towards the trailer,
(b) desire to watch the movie after viewing the trailer, (c) intention to watch the movie,
and (d) intention to share the trailer. The basic research questions in this investigation
were aimed at recognizing the advantages some rhetorical structures may have over
2 others in accurately representing the semantic content of a film trailer and in eliciting
positive audience reactions from it. The lack of sufficient literature on film trailers lends
to our borrowing of research from text comprehension and film marketing.
Rhetorical structure and comprehension
Chatman (1990) noted two inherent similarities of film and books: one being their
temporal control over their audience—that is to say, if one skips a scene or a chapter, one
has to somehow infer what has happened in the interim; the other being their use of text
structure, be it in written or spoken form (Grimes, 1975).
The importance of structure in any form of text-based work, including books and
films, is its ability to convey and identify ideas and meaning within the content in a way
that is logical and organized (Meyer, 1999). By having a discernable structure, both the
role relationships (content words relating together) and rhetorical relationships
(superordinate ideas relating together) within the content of a text can be analyzed and
comprehended by the reader, as intended by the author (Grimes, 1975; Meyer, 1975).
Authors use structure to convey meaning, and readers of the text use this structure to
interpret the author’s intended meaning. This comprehension is effectively known as
shared meaning (Meyer, 1999).
However, comprehension is most often dependent on the interaction between
several factors, such as characteristics of the text and characteristics of the reader
(Grimes, 1975; Meyer, Brandt & Bluth, 1980; Meyer, 1999; Meyer & Poon, 2001).
Although authors choose their structure and how to organize their ideas with audience
characteristics in mind, they cannot always accurately predict how their audience will
3 interpret meaning, due to the vast individual differences a reader brings into the reading
experience, such as learning task, background knowledge, emotional state, etc (Grimes,
1975; Meyer, 1999; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). Therefore, it is important, if not always
probable, to choose a readily identifiable structure and to ensure that both experienced
and novice readers (or in this case, an avid film watcher versus one who rarely watches
films) will be able to identify and analyze the structure in order to comprehend the
intended meanings (Meyer, 1975). Once a piece of work is released, any feedback on
shared meaning can only, at best, be used as a guideline for the next piece of work, but
cannot be used in retrospect to change the existing work (Meyer, 1999). If individuals
desire or are averse to a film they imagine after just viewing a trailer of it (Kernan, 2004),
then it is important to establish a coherent structure that can accurately represent, already
in the context of the trailer, the plot and themes of the whole film, as intended by the
author.
Establishing the general importance of having a coherent and attainable rhetorical
structure in any text-based work is simple. The difficulty lies in the mapping between the
semantic levels—what the author wants to say—and the rhetorical levels—how to best
say it (Mann & Thompson, 1988). Researchers insist that the choices of rhetorical
structures are countless enough to require linguistically motivated guidelines in order to
choose a working structure (Kosseim & Lapalme, 2000; Mann & Thompson, 1988).
However, there seems to be no universal consensus on how to name and describe each
structure—to what degree of specification without overlapping into another structure—
and which structure is best for a particular topic (Grimes, 1975; Mann & Thompson,
1988).
4 We can therefore safely assume two things for a trailer. First, some rhetorical
structures can overlap and co-occur without compromising the meaning of an author’s
message in a story (Chatman, 1990; Grimes, 1975; Mann & Thompson, 1988). However,
the main constraints would then still be conceptual, semantic and rhetorical in nature:
what does the audience already know about a topic, what does the author really want to
say, and how best can the author convey everything he or she wants to say in the best
possible structure or combination of structures. Furthermore, we can assume that there
are no fixed rules on which structure to use for a specific topic, but choosing which
structure to use is more a matter of pragmatic heuristics (Kosseim & Lapalme, 2000):
first, if there is an even more direct relationship from structure to meaning that is not
explained by the author’s structure choice, and second, how the audience might imagine
this topic and interpret the author’s structure, different to their own structure that they
have previously applied for the target topic.
The choice of rhetorical structure is thus critical in an analysis of audience
comprehension of film trailers. Comprehension and recall have been found to be a
function of the rhetorical structure, independent of the topic (Meyer, 1974; Meyer et al.,
1980; Thorndyke, 1977). The same content structure may produce similar recall,
regardless of topic, but the inherent nature of some content structures produce superior
recall than others (Graesser, McNamara & Louwerse, 2003; Graesser, Singer & Trabasso,
1994; Lehr, 1988; Meyer, 1975; Thorndyke, 1977). The narrative structure—or the direct
story telling of a sequence of events, for example—is temporal in nature, as is the plot of
a story; therefore, the author would be able to more easily structure plot, and audience
members more easily determine plot, through a narrative rhetorical structure (Bordwell,
5 2013; Chatman, 1990; Grimes, 1975). Additionally, because of its simplicity, narrative
structure is already used for a majority of films (Bordwell, 2013; Chatman, 1990, Tan,
2013). Reasoning from the work in text structure (Cowen, 1988; Graesser et al., 1994;
Kintsch, 1988; Meyer, 1975), it makes sense that placing plot at the rhetorical level of
relations would make it easier for an audience to comprehend with less judgment and
reasoning, regardless of the audience’s background knowledge of the topic. If this is the
case, accumulation of plot elements can lead to a higher-level thought or “theme” (Black
& Wilensky, 1979; Thorndyke, 1977), making for a direct pragmatic relationship
between plot and theme. Thus, the narrative trailer structure would be most effective for
the occurrence of shared meaning or comprehension of the plot and themes between
author and viewer. Specifically, the audience viewing a film trailer with a narrative
structure would have higher scores on comprehension of the plot elements and plot
sequence, as well as a closer comprehension of theme between the author and audience.
The descriptive structure—or the verbal characterization through the use of
significant details—is more efficient in rendering the properties of things both visible and
only imaginable to the senses (Chatman, 1990; Grimes, 1975). Additionally, the audience
of a descriptive structure has the goal of being informed—acquiring new, more in-depth
knowledge of a specific topic (Graesser et al., 1994). Therefore, we reasoned that a
descriptive rhetorical structure would be a strong structure for informing readers of a
topic, leading to a possible understanding of the topic’s theme—which is never directly
represented by narrations and requires more judgment (Kosseim & Lapalme, 2000).
Therefore, we assumed that a descriptive structure would be comparable to a narrative
structure in its ability to convey the authors’ intended theme. To be clear, the descriptive
6 structure might not be the most pragmatic in conveying plot and theme, but an audience
viewing a trailer with a descriptive structure could, with more cognitive effort,
comprehend especially the theme the author intended to convey.
Rhetorical structure and audience reactions
The purpose of any form of media—books and films alike—can be summarized
into one, or a combination of, four basic goals: to inform, to entertain, to persuade, and/or
to provide an aesthetic experience (Brewer, 1980). In order to inform, comprehension or
shared meaning must be present (Meyer, 1999). We have already established the possible
advantage of the narrative rhetorical structures for comprehension. In order to entertain,
the film must provide an optimum emotional experience—emotions elicited by the film
should not be low, but should also not be so high as to forget that the viewing experience
is actually fictional (Tan, 2013). It is an interaction of this emotional experience provided
by the film, and comprehension of the film, that can predict audience reactions to the film
(Bower, 1992; Brewer & Lichtenstein, 1981; Iran-Nejad, 1987; Phillips, 2000; Schiefele,
1991; Tan, 2013).
Topic interest, personality and text-based emotional states (aroused by specific
text features) have been found to relate to learning from text (Schiefele, 1991). These
text-based emotional states can be interpreted as the entertainment experience provided
by the film (Tan, 2013). The emotional states of a reader elicited by the text can affect
interpretation of the meaning of a story for several reasons. Emotions positively influence
comprehension by increasing attention to preceding or accompanying events that have
similarity to events responsible for the current emotional arousal; these emotions also
7 increase attention to the topic information that learners judge to be significant to existing
expectations (Bower, 1992; Frijda, 1987). Because emotional arousal has a slow decay, it
hosts continuous rehearsal of information (Bower, 1992).
An optimum emotional experience affects or mediates the relationship between
comprehension and affinity. According to Zillmann and Bryant (1985), affinity is highest
when the arousal is optimum—not too high and not too low. Comprehension resulting
from resolved intellectual activity, as a result of optimum arousal and a conclusive
narration, can increase both affinity and interest towards the text—affinity and interest
both being a possible audience reaction (Iran-Nejad, 1987; Phillips, 2000). This is
supported by Tan’s (2013) empirical research on film narratives and emotions, stating
that film narratives that require more cognitive involvement and stimulation, but end with
a comprehensible solution, are favored among film viewers. Additionally, according to
Brewer and Lichtenstein’s (1981) “structural-affect theory”, narratives must stimulate
surprise, curiosity and suspense (as the entertainment experience) and have a conclusion,
and it is these dimensions that strongly correlate to an audience liking a story.
Comprehension can also influence emotions, and audience reactions. Kernan
(2004) claims that “an original, innovative and comprehensive” film trailer has the ability
to release emotions and motivate cinema attendance. This was supported by Hixson
(2005), who found that knowledge of a movies’ plot—through the trailer or other
advertising means—is a significant predictor of cinema attendance. Kernan (2004) and
Hixson (2005) thus both support associations between comprehension, emotions, and
audience reactions.
8 Tan (2013) stresses that no model exists to describe the psychological effects of
the structural functions of a feature film. Therefore, we cannot confidently state a direct
relationship between structures of film—rhetorical or surface—and influence on audience
reactions. We can, however, assume a relationship between rhetorical structures and
audience reactions that is mediated by comprehension of a film and the emotional
experience provided by a film.
First, the narrative structure of film is hypothesized to be the most pragmatic for
shared meaning—or comprehension of plot and theme. This is due to the manipulation of
fictional situations and aspects of those situations in a temporal, direct manner (Tan,
2013). Second, we have discussed the relationships between comprehension and audience
reactions, mediated by an optimum emotional experience. The narrative structure fulfills
the requirements for the creation, maintenance and modulation of emotions, and allows
for a conclusive ending, as advocated by the structure-affect theory (Brewer &
Lichtenstein, 1981; Tan, 2013). Additionally, just like the audience of a descriptive
structure has the goal of being informed, the audience of a narrative structure has the goal
of being entertained (Graesser et al., 1994; Tan, 2013). We therefore assume that the
narrative structure will have the best influence on audience reactions. Specifically, an
audience watching a film trailer with a narrative structure will be more likely to have a
stronger affinity to the trailer, desire to watch the film, intend to watch the film, and
intend to share the film’s trailer.
An individual’s pre-conceived views of a topic or of the world, as well as
the personality type of the individual, can influence to what extent the individual
comprehends a topic, and how they receive the topic, in terms of affinity (van Dijk &
9 Kintsch, 1983; Mischel, 2013; Schommer, 1990; Wittrock, 1989). The focus of the
present investigation was on the influence of rhetorical structure on comprehension and
audience reaction, independent of the different pre-conceived views and personalities of
participants. Pre-conceived topic or worldviews can vary significantly from one
individual to the next, making it more difficult to account for their influence on an
individuals comprehension and reaction. On the other hand, personality traits are stable
and inherent (Mischel, 2013). That is to say, different individuals can have the same
personality type, making it easier to predict these individuals’ assessments of, and
reactions to, any situation (Mischel, 2013). Therefore, we decided to investigate two
hypotheses—namely, that narrative structure would lead to a) higher comprehension of
plot and theme, and b) stronger audience affinity, viewing and sharing intentions—while
only controlling for pre-conceived views of the audience.
10 CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
There has been a strong interest in not only text comprehension, but also
comprehension of films and montage—that is, a series of shots involving camera
techniques and editing manipulations (Branigan, 2013; Smith, Anderson & Fischer,
1985). Early research has claimed—but never fully ascertained—a number of
disadvantages in using visual media for comprehension, such as the quick change of
scenes, camera zooms and pans, and symbolic representations in the videos, etc. (cf.
Smith et al, 1985). Such research claims that an understanding of film montages, and
television programs, appear only at the age of eight, with all the research on children
younger than eight showing the children’s lack of comprehension of story sequence in a
film.
However, several studies have been able to challenge this general assumption. A
study done by Smith, Anderson and Fischer (1985) on 71 pre-school children between the
ages of three and five asked the children to reconstruct the events of a film, using dolls
and other props provided to them. The film shown to the children contained various
camera techniques and film editing. Results implied that children could nevertheless
comprehend film and television programs, despite these camera techniques and film
editing. However, this study used film montages that were shorter then what would be
expected in a normal film or television program, therefore not entirely generalizable to
11 longer films and television programs. Despite this methodological limitation, their
research did show the importance of modifying measurement techniques to capture, a)
the language ability of the age group and b) the medium being measured, in their case,
film. Language ability and task medium had not been taken into consideration in previous
research on comprehension of short films or montage.
Other studies involved testing film comprehension of older participants, with a
more advanced language vocabulary, and a different measurement technique—recall
protocols. Bagget’s (1979) study on university students compared the recall protocol of
students who watched a short film or heard a verbal narration of the same topic. The two
conditions were an exact match, in terms of episodic structure. The only differences were
due to content aspects; whereas the verbal narration could explicitly state everything,
some story content within the film condition had to be inferred. Students had to note what
they recalled and this was compared to a recall protocol that had been normed for
measuring recall in any medium. Students in both conditions produced structurally
similar recall—that is, the spoken narration had no advantage over the visual narration.
Similarly, Gernsbacher, Varner and Faust (1990) tested 270 college students on their
comprehension of modified children’s stories in three different modalities: written,
auditory and visual. Comprehension was measured using a recall protocol. The
performance on these modalities correlated substantially, with correlations between
visual and auditory, written and picture, and written and auditory being .72, .83, and .92,
respectively. The only difference was found between students with low and high prior
knowledge of the story content.
12 In essence, research in film comprehension versus text comprehension shows that
a reader’s construction of mental representations of a given topic transcends the modality
or medium used to convey this topic (Branigan, 2013; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998).
Therefore, there must be other factors—of the text and of the individual—guiding the
comprehension of reader of a prose, which is independent of the modality used to convey
the prose. Some of these factors influencing comprehension, as well as their importance
in evaluating comprehension, are discussed in the following sections.
Defining Rhetorical Structure in Prose
A first step in being able to understand comprehension is to study the strategies
used by the author of this prose to influence comprehension—these strategies being some
of the factors of a prose. The author must have strategies in place to guide the reader to a
correct interpretation of the deeper level meaning of the topic; that is, the higher level
ideas (Meyer, 1975). Common sense or mere instinct to create text—or prose—can only
get one so far; rather, a scientific framework is needed to provide insight into
comprehension processes, and possibly even to predict comprehension (Kintsch & van
Dijk, 1978). An example of such strategies that an author can use to assist reader’s
correct comprehension of the topic, as the author intended, is to have a rhetorical
structure in the prose.
Defining rhetorical structure
The focus of this paper is on rhetorical structure of a prose, according to Meyer
(1975). The reason for this choice is that, different researchers had proposed different
ways of analyzing prose in terms of structure (cf. Meyer, 1975), but only Meyer’s
13 analysis of structural organization could be used for larger texts and was comparable
between different types of text; that is, not exclusive to one type of text, such as an
instruction text or a psychology text.
Therefore, according to Meyer (1975), a rhetorical structure looks at the different
parts or proposition networks of a prose, and the principles of combining these parts into
one entire, coherent text (Kintsch & Yarbrough, 1982; Mann, Matthiessen & Thompson,
1992). Certain general factors are needed for understanding specific elements in
sentences, but these general factors are not found in the sentences themselves (Grimes,
1975). That is, an idea in a later segment of the prose can clarify or be contingent on
another idea in an earlier segment of the prose; therefore, a general comprehension of
both ideas and the relationship between them is needed for providing a deeper
understanding of both individual sentence. A rhetorical structure—or discourse
structure—shows how these ideas within a prose are spatially organized and related
(Grimes, 195; Meyer, 1975).
The ideas within a prose are represented by different content words, such as
lexical predicates and arguments. Lexical predicates are the content words that can have a
relationship with other content words. Arguments can be either; a) single content words
that have a unique relationship to only one lexical predicate, or b) a proposition of
connected content words. Each lexical predicate and argument is grouped into a different
node. These nodes are all connected by lines, showing the overall organization of the
content within the prose. These lines are labeled to classify the relationship among the
content, and can be labeled as a role relation or a rhetorical relation. A role relation—or
lexical proposition—specifies the relationship between lexical predicates and single
14 arguments. Lexical predicates and their arguments can be related in several ways, such as
patient and agent roles. Therefore, role relations are always dominated by a lexical
predicate, and can be found at all levels throughout the structure.
On the other hand, a rhetorical relation specifies the relationship between
superordinate ideas; that is, rhetorical propositions. In this case, both the predicate and
the argument are rhetorical or high level ideas, already connected in propositional
networks. Therefore, rhetorical relations are most often found at the top level of the
structure. The spatial organization of ideas within a prose into lexical and rhetorical
propositions results in a hierarchical structure containing subordinate and superordinate
ideas. Because rhetorical relations clarify how two or more superordinate ideas relate
together, they can be used to relate whole paragraphs and chapters together. The nature of
these rhetorical relations within a prose is then responsible for defining the overall
organization or structure of the prose.
Importance of Rhetorical Structures for Comprehension
The use of a proper, coherent rhetorical structure—the effective spatial
organization of a prose—is therefore necessary for a deeper comprehension of a topic,
and for evaluating this comprehension to interpret the effectiveness of the prose (Meyer,
1975).
Rhetorical structure in comprehension
Comprehension of syntax and other surface factors of a text are important for
creating a surface representation of the text in a reader’s mind (Kintsch & van Dijk,
1978). However, previous research on comprehension at the syntax and surface level
15 proved that this focus on surface was too limiting to judge if text meaning has occurred
(Marshall & Glock, 1978). In fact, Sachs argued that people could not differentiate
between sentences with slight word changes, but that people remembered the “meaning”
of a text more so than the actual words and sentences (as cited in Marshall & Glock,
1978, p. 12). This “meaning” or semantic text comprehension is important for
comprehension of a topic at a deeper, semantic level; which is then necessary for
measuring judgments of the topic of the text beyond text meaning, judgments of affinity
towards the text and topic, reproductions of stories, and other reactions (Kintsch & van
Dijk, 1978).
The rhetorical structure of a prose guides a reader to a deeper, semantic
comprehension of a text, and topic of the text (Fillmore, 1977; Marshall & Glock, 1978;
Meyer, 1999). This is based on the three basic assumptions of Meyer’s (1975) rhetorical
structure. The first assumption is that, the information located at the top level of a
hierarchical organization of a prose are the main ideas of an author of that prose, and
leads to higher recall and comprehension, as well as being retained for longer.
Comprehending these superordinate ideas are what allow for deeper topic
comprehension. The second assumption is that the relations between top-level ideas in a
content hierarchy influence the recall of these top-level ideas significantly, whereas
relations between bottom-level ideas have no influence on the recall of the bottom-level
ideas. That is, how the superordinate ideas are related to each—for example, are the facts
of a topic related to each other by a cause-effect relationship, or an argument
relationships, or other—affects how the mental representation of a topic will be formed in
the mind of a reader. Finally, the third assumption in this theory is that manipulating the
16 top-level structure in a text affects the recall and retention of information within the text.
In other words, changing the superordinate ideas and their relations changes the mental
model of the topic within the reader’s mind.
According to both Bordwell (2013) on film comprehension, and Mann &
Thompson (1988) on text comprehension, both the writer and the reader of a prose have
schemas of the layout of different rhetorical structures. If the rhetorical structure in a
prose is clear and coherent, adult readers, and even some young children who are already
good readers—can easily be aware of what rhetorical structure is being used, and may
use this rhetorical organization to influence the comprehension and recall of top-level or
superordinate ideas (Fitzgerald & Spiegel, 1983; McGee, 1982; Meyer, 1975; Meyer &
Poon, 2001).
Meyer, Brandt and Bluth (1980) demonstrated the ability of rhetorical structure to
influence recall of top-level ideas in their study on 102 ninth grade students. The sample
contained poor, average and good comprehenders, based on their performance on
previous SATs. They were tested on their recall of two prose passages, both with clearly
identifiable top-level structures. One passage had a problem-solution rhetorical structure,
and the other passage had a comparison rhetorical structure. Students who used the toplevel structure of the two passages had better recall and comprehension of the contents,
regardless of which structure they used.
McGee (1982) found similar results, when testing a sample of 60 third and fifth
graders—including good and bad readers—on their recall of two prose passages,
organized in a similar hierarchical structure. Results showed that regardless of reading
17 ability, the fifth graders had a high awareness of text structure, and therefore recalled
more superordinate than subordinate ideas, regardless of topic. Because the superordinate
ideas are the meanings and fact that the author wants to convey, comprehension of these
superordinate ideas is correct comprehension as the author intended—that is, shared
meaning has occurred (Meyer, 1999).
Situation models in comprehension
Along with using the rhetorical structure to guide their comprehension of a text,
readers use their pre-existing situation model—or mental model—to interpret the
semantic contents of this text and form a mental representation of the topic as a whole
(Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan & Radvanksy, 1998). The
situation model is one of the factors in an individual that influences comprehension.
Situation models are subjective, utilizing the pre-existing structures of linguistic
knowledge, topic background knowledge, and general situations knowledge, in order to
interpret the deeper meaning of the text (Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983;
Wittrock, 1990).
McNamara, Kintsch, Songer and Kintsch (1996) examined the importance of
situation models for prose comprehension. They examined the effects of both a low and a
high coherence text on both low and high-knowledge participants. Fifty-six middle
school students (M = 13 years, 11 months) were first tested for their prior knowledge of a
specific topic. The researchers then presented some of these participants with the low
coherence text first, and other participants with the high coherence text first. As expected,
the participants with high prior knowledge—or a good situation model of the topic—
18 could more easily comprehend the low coherence text. Additionally, Ozuru, Dempsey
and McNamara’s (2009) study on 108 college students (mean age = 21.1, SD = 3.6)
found that an individuals’ prior knowledge was positively correlated to their
comprehension of a biology text, and this text comprehension increased in the high
coherence text condition compared to the low coherence text condition.
These studies on situation models show that a situation model is important in
comprehension when a text has low coherence, but that it is the high coherence of a text
or text structure that directly increases comprehension. In other words, regardless of the
reader’s situation model, incorrect comprehension occurs when the reader of a text or an
audience member of a film builds a mental representation of a topic that is coherent but is
not the mental representation of the topic that the author intended, as conveyed by the
rhetorical structure (Bransford, 1979). The semantic comprehension of a text can only be
defined as correct when it resembles the deeper meaning of the topic as intended by the
author—this correct comprehension is then known as shared meaning (Meyer, 1999). The
author’s main ideas are conveyed at the top-level of the structure, and using the rhetorical
structure of a text to guide encoding and retrieval of these higher level ideas is thus most
effective in leading readers to shared meaning (Meyer, 1987; Meyer et al, 1980).
In turn, shared meaning or correct comprehension can be evaluated using the
structure of the recall of a reader.
Evaluating comprehension
Readers use the rhetorical structure to comprehend the topic as the author
intended; that is, for shared meaning to occur. By doing this, they recall the information
19 in the same hierarchical organization that the information was originally presented in
(Marshall & Glock, 1978; McGee, 1982; Meyer, 1975; 1977). This means that the
structure of their mental representation of a topic will resemble the structure the author
used to convey the deeper meaning of the topic (Marshall & Glock, 1978; McGee, 1982).
The structure of their recall can be used to evaluate if they have indeed comprehended the
meaning of the text, as intended by the author.
Problems in evaluating the comprehension of a text were inherent in the measures
of comprehension previously used (Meyer, 1975). Previous measures of comprehension
used a question and answer format (for an overview of research in these comprehension
measures, see Meyer, 1975). The most consistent problems in using this kind of
comprehension technique was the inability of the examiners to decide which topic points
within the prose to question on, and the difficulty in providing a rationale of why these
specific topic points were chosen to measure comprehension of the prose as a whole
(Meyer, 1975). Because of these problems, examiners could not evaluate if a true, global
comprehension of a text had occurred.
In contrast, rhetorical structures allowed examiners to evaluate comprehension of
the passage. Examiners scored the verbatim and paraphrased recalls in terms of content
word units and relationship units. They then scored these text content units and text
relationship units according to their absence or presence in the structure of a passage
(Meyer, 1975). Comprehension was evaluated as having high recall of both content and
relationship units present in the structure of the passage, and according to this
organization of the passage. This method was found reliable, and there was inter-rater
20 agreement over 99% of the time, as to which units were absent or present within the
passage (Meyer, 1975).
Therefore, a structured prose is important not only in leading a reader to having
shared meaning with the author, but also to evaluate that shared meaning—or correct
comprehension—has occurred. Therefore, choosing a clear, coherent rhetorical structure
is necessary to judge the comprehension and effectiveness of a prose. Choosing a Rhetorical Structure in Prose An author understands the importance of structuring their prose according to a
coherent and clear rhetorical structure. The next step would involve knowing which
rhetorical structure would be the most effective for shared meaning.
Introducing some rhetorical structures
Terminology for rhetorical structures has differed between researchers (a few
examples are in Meyer, 1975; Mann & Thompson, 1988; Kosseim & Lapalme, 2000) but
the essence of each rhetorical relation is consistent, and it is these rhetorical relations that
define the structure or organization of a prose. For example, a response rhetorical relation
can define a problem-solution rhetorical structure, a question-answer rhetorical structure,
or a remark-reply rhetorical structure. In all these three structures, the superordinate ideas
carry equal weight and resolve one another. On the other hand, an argument rhetorical
relation can define an argument rhetorical structure, an alternative rhetorical structure or
a comparison rhetorical structure, where more weight is given to one superordinate idea
and the rest of the ideas are used to support this. Time setting and location setting
rhetorical relations define a narrative structure, where a sequence of events are related in
21 the time context they occur. Explanation or elaboration rhetorical relations describe a
descriptive structure, where previously related information is further explained in either a
more concrete or more abstract manner.
Considering semantic content
Having a coherent rhetorical structure can improve comprehension of a topic,
regardless of what structure is being used by a reader or an author. This is seen in the
Meyer, Brandt and Bluth (1980) study explained in the previous section. Students, who
used the top- level structures of two passages with two different structures, had similar
high recall, regardless of which structure was used in the passage. Therefore, it is
important for an author to choose a rhetorical structure to convey the topic in a prose;
regardless of what structure he or she chooses.
Additionally, Meyer (1974) found that the same structure produce similar recall,
regardless of the content of the prose. She found this to be the case when testing
comprehension of two different passages with identical structure but different content.
She tested two groups of 24 university students, giving them two passages, of identical
structure but different content. She measured their comprehension by scoring their recall
of content and relationship units. A correlation of .55 was found between recall
frequencies in the content structure of the two passages. These results implied that the
comprehension of a passage is closely related to the structure of the passage, regardless
of the content.
So how does the author decide which structure to use to convey his or her topic
meaning? When deciding how to structure a prose, Kosseim and Lapalme (2000) pointed
22 out the importance of considering both the content of a topic to be conveyed, as well as
the structure with which to convey this topic. The author, having a topic in mind, must
know what he or she wants to say about that topic, and what meaning they want a reader
to elicit from their text about that topic. This meaning that the author wants to convey to
the reader ultimately places semantic constraints on how the author will structure the
prose. For example, the author wants to write about a specific mechanical procedure.
Specifically, he or she wants a reader to understand how to fix a specific problem that
arises during that mechanical procedure. This specific intention of meaning automatically
puts constraints on what rhetorical relations—and therefore rhetorical structure—the
author must now use. In this case, a response rhetorical structure—with problem-solution
relations between the superordinate ideas—will be more effective for shared meaning to
occur, rather than an argument rhetorical structure or a descriptive rhetorical structure.
Considering situation models
On the other hand, if the intention of the author is to inform a reader about a topic
with which the author predicts the reader to be unfamiliar with, the choice is often a
descriptive structure, in which they can explain details of the topic in either more abstract
or more concrete ways (Graesser et al., 2003). This can effectively support the semantic
intentions of the author.
However, this structure but might not be entirely effective in shared meaning.
According to Graesser, McNamara and Louwerse (2003) and Graesser, Singer and
Trabasso (1994), a reader of a descriptive text will have more difficulty in inferring
connections between propositions in a descriptive structure, because a) temporal and
23 causal connection within a descriptive structure are harder to infer, therefore harder to
interpret the relationship between one fact of the topic to the other, and b) the reader
might not have an extensive knowledge—or situation model—of that topic to begin with,
with which to interpret meaning. In fact, results of the study done by McGee (1982) on
40 third and fifth grade—as described earlier on—showed that despite comprehension
being higher with an awareness of the rhetorical structure, only 40% of the topic material
within this descriptive structure was generally comprehended.
Therefore, an author must also take into account the situation model of the reader
(Meyer, 1999; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). The situation model of a reader can lead them
to make some misconstruction of meaning. However, the author cannot predict every
individual difference of a reader, in order to prevent a misconstruction of meaning
(Meyer, 1999). A good reader or an avid film watcher can modify the text or film
structure to fit their situation model, or update their own situation model to understand
the meaning of the author (Meyer, 1999; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). Therefore, the
most important fact for the author to consider is to have a coherent structure or “thread of
discourse” (Grimes, 1975; Meyer, 1999).
Choosing rhetorical structures
Having a coherent rhetorical structure can improve comprehension of a topic;
regardless of what structure a reader or an author is using, or what the intended meaning
of the topic is. However, the inherent nature of some content structures produces superior
recall than others (Graesser et al., 2003; Graesser et al., 1994; Lehr, 1988; Meyer, 1975;
Thorndyke, 1977).
24 For example, the narrative structure is perhaps the most effective if an author
wants to convey a series of events that can happen in the general lifespan of an
individual. The intention of the author is to convey, in space and time, an individual with
goals; what these goals are; how this individual goes about pursuing these goals; how
they deal with and react to obstacles in their pursuit of these goals; and, the themes or
deeper meaning of these events or situation (Graesser et al., 2003). This describes the
majority of most commercial books and films—that is, excluding academic, religious,
and scientific and lifestyle books and films. Second, the narrative structure has a similar
blueprint to the situation models of everyday experiences that a reader has (Cowen, 1988;
Graesser et al., 1994). Therefore, the reader is more likely to comprehend both the events
and the situation—including the deeper meaning of the text—regardless of the differing
themes, because they can more easily use the rhetorical structure and superordinate ideas
of the author, and use their situation models of life events (Graesser et al., 1994).
In fact, Thorndyke (1977) measured the influence of plot or events in the top-level
of a structure of a text on recall and comprehension of other ideas or themes within the
text. He measured the recall and comprehension of 112 undergraduate students on two
passages with similar plot structure but different contents. The results showed recall and
comprehension were dependent on the amount of plot structure present, and not the
overall content of the passages. Using this plot structure, participants recall and
comprehension were higher for themes within the passages, and not as much the precise
details of the passages.
Perhaps the frequent use of the narrative structure gives it an unfair advantage
over other structures for some topics. Reviews of several studies on the theme
25 comprehension of younger children (cf. Lehr, 1988) claim that young children were able
to recall and comprehend theme from narrative texts more easily than from descriptive
texts. This was due to their frequent encounter and familiarity with the narrative
structure, and lack of familiarity with the descriptive structure, even though the latter is
most used by authors to describe new, unfamiliar events. Story books for younger
readers, or to read to younger children, almost always follow a narrative structure. Even
though younger children are less able to construct proper, analytical statement of themes
as adults can, both children and adults are more likely to interpret theme from the
narrative structure (Lehr, 1988).
Investigating Rhetorical Structure in Film
Film literacy develops with an individual’s age and knowledge of the world, with
adults comprehending film narratives as easily as text passages, regardless of length
(Smith et al., 1985). The relationship between montage linearity, comprehension and
recall is similar to that in text, confirming that schema of rhetorical structures transcends
modalities (Cowen, 1988). However, according to Cowen (1988), the film is more
expressive than the text in conveying time and spatial relationships, If the film does not
follow the conventional narrative edit, an audience member will likely fill in the gaps,
and achieve optimal intellectual activity and entertainment (Cowen, 1988; Phillips,
2000).
To demonstrate the relationship between the structure of a film and its audience,
Cowen (1988) manipulated a short film with a narrative structure into four different edits.
All edited versions contained the same shots, and had no verbal information such as
26 voice-over or dialogue or text. They differed only in the degree of linearity between these
shots. Linearity was defined as following a typical narrative story grammar. The 96
participants were randomly assigned to one of the four short film versions. They were
tested on their recall and comprehension of linear events, and were asked to reconstruct
the story with elaborations. Finally, they were asked for their judgments of affinity
towards the character, towards specific shots and towards the film as a whole.
Cowen found that having to mentally construct a more linear comprehension—in
the less linear films—using an individual’ schema did not affect their judgments of
comprehension of the film. However, the less linear the film edit, the more negative the
participants evaluation of the actual film, as well as of the character and shots. In essence,
it is the linearity of a film itself that affects the aesthetic experience of the film, not the
linearity of the comprehension.
Need for present investigation
Some studies showed that the narrative structure was better for comprehension of
plot and theme, due to its linear nature in which the author could convey the topic
meaning. In contrast, Cowen’s study showed that linearity was not an important factor in
comprehension, but it was an important factor in judging affinity. Overall, understanding
how an audience comprehends a film trailer is necessary to measure judgments of the
topic of the film, judgments of affinity towards the film, reproductions of stories, and
other reactions. This is especially important in film trailers, which are widely used as
marketing before a theatrical release. It therefore seems necessary to do further research
on what type of rhetorical structures in films are most effective at leading to a
27 comprehension and affinity of a whole film topic and its themes, starting with a narrative
and descriptive rhetorical structure.
28 CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
Design and Participants
One hundred and thirty nine undergraduate students (70 percent female, 30
percent male) volunteered for participation from a mid-size university in the Western
United states. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four between-subjects
experimental conditions of Rhetorical Structure—Narrative vs. Descriptive vs. Original
vs. Control, with 37, 33, 34, and 35 of the students present in each of the conditions,
respectively. Demographic data of the participants revealed that: 1) their primary
language was English (76%); and 2) they fell into four age groups as follows:18-23
(89%), 24-29 (10%), 30-35 (.7%) and 36+ (.7%). On a scale of 1 = not at all to 7 = daily,
participants’ mean film viewing behavior was 4.64 (SD = 1.33), and their mean nonschool related reading behavior was 3.15 (SD = 1.70).
Experimental Materials
The experimental materials consisted of the viewing task and four categories of
measures: Category 1 – measures of self – consisted of a measure of general attitudes
toward the world and a measure of personality. Category 2 – measures of
comprehension– consisted of tasks assessing students’ understanding of the plot and
theme. Category 3 – reaction measures – was comprised of self-reported measures of
affinity, viewing desire, viewing intention and intention to share. Category four—
29 engagement measures—consisted of measures of engagement with the content of the
viewing task.
Viewing Task
The viewing task consisted of a three minute, four second trailer consisting of six
scenes distributed into three acts. The first act introduced the social setting and personal
history of a protagonist that leads him down a destructive path, setting the scenes for the
rest of the trailer. The second act focuses more deeply on the protagonist’s journey of
discovery of hidden theories and connections between elements in the universe, along
with the way the protagonist questions how he has been living out his existence. The third
act shows the protagonist in a new state of awakening, and what he ultimately decides to
do with this new insight. The trailer was produced by a professional film company to be
shown globally to a wide audience in advance of the release of an original film.
The trailer was edited for structure following a specific segmentation procedure.
First, the trailer was divided into the three acts – each act roughly one minute long; next,
each act was further segmented into two scenes, with each scene roughly 30 – 35 seconds
long and distributed equally across the trailer (see Figure 1).
In order to manipulate the trailer for rhetorical structure, black frames containing
1-4 words were inserted between the scenes, totaling six black frames showing text in
white Times New Roman 12-pt. font and appearing for two seconds each. When the
rhetorical structure was a narrative, the frames contained words that, as an aggregate,
conveyed a story—specifically; Worldwide chaos/ a tortured man/ helpless/ discovers the
hidden/ reaching true awakening/ for himself and humanity. When the rhetorical
30 structure was descriptive, the frames contained words designed to elaborate on the
fundamental idea inherent in the scene subsequent to the frame—specifically, Galactic
connections/ the inner conscious/ connected/ an unending continuum/ allowing true
awakening/ for self and humanity. The final variation of the trailer was used as a control.
In the control trailer, the black frames were present but absent of text. All words present
in each black frame across both the narrative and descriptive condition were of equal
strength and had equivalent visually evoking properties. The original trailer was not
manipulated.
Figure 1. Segmenting a film trailer into acts, text screens (T) and scenes. This figure illustrates the trailer
manipulations in order to vary rhetorical structures.
31 Measures of Self
Two measures of self were used in this investigation– general affect towards the
world, and personality. Affect towards the world was measured by the Semantic
Differential Technique and personality was measured by the BFAS.
Semantic Differential Technique. The Semantic Differential Technique (SDT)
(Osgood & Suci, 1955) was used to measure students’ attitude towards the world – a
measure of how participants feel when they think about the world. The SDT consists of
30 pairs of polar adjectives placed across a weighted seven-point continuum, allowing for
a “neutral” point in the middle of the continuum for any ambivalent judgments (Kaplan,
1972). The SDT measures to what degree the bipolar adjectives represent the
respondents’ emotional evaluation of the topic or object at hand, with a value of 1 at the
end of the weighted scale representing a positive adjective, and a 7 at the other end of the
weighted scale representing a negative adjective. When used in its original form, Osgood
& Suci, (1955) reported internal consistency reliability values of the SDT ranging from
.80 to .90.
In the present investigation, the original SDT was modified to insert adjectives
relevant to students’ conceptions of the world, according to a modification procedure
proposed by Carter, Ruggels and Schaffee (2001). First, adjectives were sampled from
three sources—1) from the original instrument, 2) from the authors of the trailer relative
to the kinds of impressions and concepts the authors intended for viewers to derive from
watching the film, and 3) from a group of undergraduate participants relative to the
adjectives they considered when they thought about the world. Fourteen adjective
32 pairings came from the original instrument, seven single adjectives from the authors, and
30 positive and 30 negative adjectives from the undergraduates. The resulting adjective
pool totaled 95.
Next, the adjectives need to be placed on the bi-polar scales. To accomplish this,
the authors’ adjectives were paired with corresponding first-order acronyms selected
from the Webster’s dictionary, yielding fourteen adjectives placed on seven scales as
semantically different pairs; the undergraduate adjectives were selected from both the
positive and negative adjective pool only if the adjectives had been stated by more than
one undergraduate student. Eleven adjectives met this criterion. Antonyms for these
eleven adjectives were generated by the undergraduates by consensus; yielding 22
adjectives placed on eleven scales as semantically different pairs. Two adjective pairings
were deleted from the original scale. The final pool of adjectives consisted of 12 pairings
from the original scale, seven pairings from the author, and 11 pairings from the
undergraduates, resulting in a final total of 60 adjectives, and 30 pairings. Finally, the
scales for each adjective line were reversed, in order to prevent a repetitive effect of
consistently circling only at one end of the scale. The modified SDT reported a
Cronbach’s alpha of .92.
Personality Measures. The Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS), constructed by
DeYoung, Quilty & Peterson (2007), was used to measure the five broad domains of
personality: Openness/Intellect, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and
Neuroticism (DeYoung, 2010) as five aspects of individual differences in audience
reactions to the trailer. The BFAS is a 100 item instrument in which participants rate on a
scale of 1= strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, how much each item statement
33 applies to them. The instrument has demonstrated high retest reliability, construct and
external validity, as well as applicability across observers and cultures (cf. McCrae and
Costa, 1989; Jang, Livesley, Angleitner, Riemann, & Vernon, 2002; DeYoung & Gray,
2009).
In order to reduce the administration time of the BFAS, and to address only the
personality variables of interest in the present investigation, only three of the five scales
were assessed based on recommendations by DeYoung, Weisberg, Quilty & Peterson
(2013). Thus, the domains chosen for this study were: 1) Agreeableness, with its
subscales of Compassion and Politeness , 2) Conscientiousness, with its subscale of
Industriousness and Orderliness, and 3) Openness, with its subscales of Openness and
Intellect . Agreeableness reflects the tendency toward altruism and cooperation, instead
of aggressiveness and exploitation of others; Conscientiousness reflects a respondent’s
ability and tendency to exert top down control of behavior and impulses in order to
follow rules, a seemingly more stable personality trait; finally, Openness reflects
imagination, curiosity, creativity, reasoning, cognitive flexibility, divergent thinking,
comprehension, memory, and intelligence—the aggregate of which is termed Cognitive
Exploration. Openness is the only one of the big five domains that is consistently
positively correlated with intelligence tests (r = .30; Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997;
DeYoung, 2010). In the present investigation, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and
Openness yielded Cronbach’s Alpha values of .84, .84, and .85, respectively.
34 Comprehension Measures
Two aspects of comprehension were measured in this investigation—
comprehension of plot and comprehension of theme. Plot was measured by the Plot
Element Selection Task and Theme was measured by the Theme Rating Task.
Plot. The Plot Element Selection Task was an original instrumented designed for
this investigation to measure comprehension of plot within the trailer, by selecting from a
pool of 14 possible plot elements and sequences; seven of these plot elements were true;
that is, they were events that occurred in the trailer, and seven of these plot elements were
false; that is, they were events that did not occur in the trailer.
Developing the task consisted of several steps. First, we selected the important
plot elements that progressed the story, as gathered from an initial interview with the
author, resulting in nine plot elements. Next, four undergraduate students were asked to
view several different trailers for the first time and identify the plot elements and
sequences they interpreted from these trailers. Following the acquaintance task, the
students were then tasked with viewing the experimental trailer for the first time and
defining trailer’s plot elements and sequences. The majority of the undergraduates
interpreted the plot elements and sequences similar to the nine selected by the
researchers. Based on feedback from the undergraduates, we then edited the nine plot
elements and reached a consensus of seven plot elements, which were then approved by
the author of the trailer. The seven false plot elements were then selected from the visuals
in the trailer that corresponded to a true plot element in the same act, based on the initial
misinterpretations of plot by the same undergraduate participants.
35 The final task involved two subtasks: the first subtask required participants to
select seven of 14 possible plot elements provided on a numbered list. The second
subtask directed participants to place these 7 selected plot elements into a proper
sequence according to the degree to which participants understood the order of events in
the trailer. These subtasks yielded a Cronbach’s Alpha of .84.
Theme. The Rating Theme Task (RTT), developed specifically for this
investigation, was used to measure comprehension of the themes the author intended to
be present in the trailer. In order to construct the RTT, we first collected the intended
author themes during initial interviews with the author, resulting in five themes. Next, we
derived secondary themes that may have been present in the trailer but were not
specifically intended by the author. In order to identify these secondary themes, 12
undergraduate volunteers watched the trailer two times, each time writing down the
themes they believed were present in the trailer, followed by the production of a
statement summarizing the gist of the trailer’s most salient themes. Next, the salient
themes were used to generate a reduced list of secondary themes, culled for redundancies.
The reduced list was comprised of 17 secondary themes. Next, the reduced list of
secondary themes were each rated by five undergraduate volunteers on a 7-point Likert
scale to reflect the degree to which the undergraduates believed the themes were present
in the trailer, (1 = not close to the theme 7 = extremely close to the theme). From this
list, five themes with a mean closest to one, (with a standard deviation of 1 or less) were
selected, so as to have five secondary themes that were perceived by a subjective
audience but that were not similar to the author themes. Finally, we composed two
distracter themes for each of the 5 author themes – one of medium similarity, and one of
36 far similarity. Each of these distracter themes were normed by the same undergraduate
students on a scale of 1 = not similar to the theme to 7 = extremely similar to the theme.
For the distracter themes of medium similarity, we selected those with a mean in the
range of three to five, and a standard deviation of less than one. For the distracter themes
of far similarity, we selected those with a mean of less than two and a standard deviation
of less than one.
Based on this procedure, the final RTT was composed of 20 themes: five true
author themes, five secondary themes, and ten distracter themes. Ratings on the Task was
accomplished using a series of curved lines extending outwards from each theme
statement, with the smaller curved line indicating a ‘close’ rating, and the bigger curved
line extending further out indicating a ‘far’ rating for each theme. The closer the rating,
the closer a respondent perceived the statement as describing a theme as being present in
the trailer. The further the rating, the further a respondent perceived the statement as
being present in the trailer.
The final RTT involved contained 20 theme statements; each according to how
close or far the respondent felt the statement described a theme they believed was present
in the trailer. To score these ratings, we measured these ratings on a centimeter ruler
stick. The RTT had a Cronbach’s alpha of .76.
Reaction Measures
Four aspects of reaction behavior were measured in the present investigation—
affinity toward the trailer, viewing desire of the film after watching the trailer, intention
to view the film after watching the trailer, and intention to share the trailer. For each of
37 the four declarative measures, participants were asked to respond to a dichotomous scale
(yes/no) and to a Likert scale on a scale of 1 = not at all to 5 = completely. E-prime was
used to analyze participants’ reaction time when responding to each of the scales.
On the dichotomous and Likert scales respectively, the questions for affinity were
“Do you like the trailer?” and “How much do you like the trailer?” For viewing desire,
the questions were “Do you want to watch the movie?” and “How much do you want to
watch the movie?” Viewing intention was measured by responses to the questions: “Do
you intend to watch the movie” and “How much do you intend to watch the movie?”
Sharing intentions were measured by the questions: “Do you intend to share the trailer?”
and “How much do you intend to share the trailer?”.
Attention Measures
Attention was measured with two tasks— attention to the verbal descriptions of
ideas presented within the trailer and attention to the verbal statement made in the trailer.
The former was measured by the Description Task; and the latter was assessed using the
Recognition Task.
Description. The Description Task, developed for the present
investigation, was used to measure viewers’ attention to ideas in the trailer. Participants
were asked to choose four of eight given statements that they believed were ideas present
in the trailer. Of these eight statements, four were true descriptions of ideas made
concrete in the trailer, and four were descriptions of ideas never made concrete in the
trailer.
38 Description statements were selected by noting all complete verbal descriptions
made in the trailer, resulting in only four true descriptions of concrete ideas made in the
trailer, which we summarized to form our four true description statements. Four false
description statements were then constructed using ideas that were implied through the
visual stimuli but not made concrete through use of verbal descriptions.
Recognition. The Recognition Task, also developed for the present
investigation, was a measure of attention to statements made in the trailer. The task
consisted of 18 statements: six verbatim statements, six paraphrased statements, and six
false statements. Participants were asked to check ‘Y’ if they believed the statement was
in the trailer, and ‘N’ if they believed the statement was not in the trailer. We scored the
results by taking the correct ‘Y’ answers to both the verbatim and the paraphrased
statements.
The statements used for this task were selected following several guidelines. In
order to avoid a recency effect, we wrote down all statements from all the three acts,
resulting in 28 statements, and then selected only those statements that were audible and
complete statements, avoiding exceptionally long statements and double-barreled
statements. This reduction process resulted in a pool of 24 statements, with only six of
those statements being in the first act, eight in the second act, and ten in the third act. We
then used an online random generator to: 1) discard two statements from the second act,
and four statements from the third act, resulting in six statements per act, and 2) select
which six statements to keep verbatim, which six to paraphrase, and which six to make
false, by a simple negation of the facts.
39 Procedure
A total of 15 sessions were run over a two-week period, lasting between 50-70
minutes each. Participants were tested in groups in a computer lab, where each computer
was pre-assigned to one of the four trailer conditions. On arrival, participants had to sign
an Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and an informed consent before further
participation. The participants were then asked to complete the first set of measures—the
measures of self – the SDT, the demographics questionnaire, and the BFAS, in such an
order so as to avoid influence of SDT on their BFAS answers.
Next, participants were then instructed to click on a link on their computer screens
that took them to the viewing task (film trailer) and the reaction measures. There, they
were directed to watch the trailer using headphones pre-set at a standard volume and
answer the e-prime questions before taking off the headphones.
Participants then had to complete the two comprehension tasks and the two
attention tasks—both of which were counter-balanced. Only after all participants in a
running group completed all four of the tasks did they get further instructions. Thus,
when they were ready, the participants were the instructed to complete the SDT post
exposure task. To analyze a general affect shift, or a change of rating on a specific
adjective, the SDT had been adapted for post stimuli administration. The only difference
in the SDT pre and post exposure was in task demands—for pre exposure, the task
demand was to circle how accurately the adjectives described theirs feelings when they
thought about the world, and for post trailer exposure, the task demand was to circle how
40 accurately the adjectives described their feelings when they thought about the world,
after watching the trailer (Cronbach’s alpha of .94).
Finally, participants were thanked for their participation, debriefed, told not to
speak of the experiment to other students who were yet to participate, and excused.
41 CHAPTER IV
RESULTS
It was important to first establish the degree of attention of the participants to the
trailer across the four experimental conditions. Attention One (A1) measured attention to
the audiovisual descriptions of ideas within the trailer and Attention Two (A2) measured
attention to verbal statements made within the trailer.
Since the two measures of attention were unrelated, scores for each were entered
into two separate univariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs) across the four conditions of
rhetorical structure (narrative, descriptive, original and control). For both estimates, the
analyses yielded non-significant results,(E1: F (3,135) = 1.39, MSerror = .55, p > .05; E2:
F (3,135) = 1.32, MSerror = 5.14, p > .05), indicating no differences in participant’s
levels of attention with each of the four versions of the trailers. Total attention levels as
estimated by audiovisual descriptions (M = 3.17, SD = 0.75) and verbal statements (M =
11.06, SD = 2.28) revealed that viewers attention to the trailer was reasonably high—
79% and 61%, respectively.
Hypotheses
Two experimental hypotheses were tested, namely: 1) participants viewing the
trailer within the narrative structure would have better comprehension of the plot and
themes of the trailer, and 2) participants in the narrative structure would have stronger
reactions to the trailer.
42 Rhetorical Structures and Comprehension
With regard to hypothesis one, comprehension was measured for the degree to
which participants understood the plot elements and sequence in the trailer, and the
degree to which participants understood the themes of the trailer as intended by the
author. Since plot elements and plot sequence were correlated with one another (r = .317,
p < .001), but showed no correlation with theme, (r = -.024, p = .779 and r = -.043, p =
.616, respectively), both measures of plot, and the single measure of theme were entered
as dependent measures into two separate analyses, respectively. We also reasoned that
viewers’ worldview may mediate the degree to which the rhetorical structure of the
trailers would influence plot and theme. Thus, plot elements and sequence were entered
into a 1-way MANCOVA, and theme was entered into a 1-way ANCOVA, with
worldview as the covariate in both analyses. The metric for worldview was formed as a
composite variable from the SDT adjective pairings, using the sum of the seven pairs
provided by the author. The values ranged from a value of 7 to 49, with a Cronbach’s
alpha =.70.
With regard to the measure of plot, the MANCOVA revealed a marginally
significant multivariate effect of rhetorical structure on plot comprehension when
controlling for worldview, ΛRoy= .050, F (3,134) = 2.23, p = .088, partial η2 = .048.
Although worldview was not a significant covariate for either plot elements (F (1,134) =
.043, p > .05) or sequence (F (1,134) = .107, p > .05), follow up univariate ANOVA’s
revealed that participants had marginally better plot element comprehension in the
Narrative (M = 5.00, SD = 1.05), Descriptive (M = 5.03, SD = 0.95) and Control (M =
5.14, SD = 1.09) conditions, compared to the Original condition (M = 4.56, SD = 0.89), F
43 (3,134) = 2.22, MSerror = 1.01, p = .089, partial η2 = .047 (see Figure 2). There were no
significant differences of plot sequence scores between the Control (M = 1.66, SD =
1.73), Descriptive (M = 1.67, SD = 1.36), Narrative (M = 1.32, SD = 1.29) and Original
condition (M = 1.32, SD = 1.20).
For theme, the analysis revealed that worldview was a significant covariate, F
(1,133) = 4.39, p = .038, partial η2 = .032. Thus, when controlling for worldview pre
exposure, the ANCOVA yielded significant variations in theme comprehension between
the four trailer conditions, F (3,133) = 2.52, MSerror = 0.607, p = .061, partial η2 = .054.
Specifically, post hoc tests of least significant differences revealed that participants
viewing the trailer in the Narrative structure (M = 1.64, SD = 0.64) demonstrated a
significantly better concept of theme than participants in the Descriptive (M = 2.02, SD =
1.06), Original (M = 2.03, SD = 0.51) and Control (M = 2.07, SD = 0.85) conditions (see
Figure 3).
Rhetorical Structures and Reactions
With regards to the second hypothesis, namely that participants in the narrative structure
would have stronger reactions to the trailer, reactions were measured in terms of four
variables—affinity toward the trailer, viewing desires, viewing intentions, and intentions
to share the trailer. We again reasoned that the same covariate as above, worldview, may
mediate the degree to which the rhetorical structure would influence reactions to the
trailer. Because the four reaction variables were significantly correlated (see Table 1), a
1-Way MANCOVA was run to analyze differences in reaction due to the influence of
rhetorical structures. The analysis revealed that worldview was not a significant covariate
for any of the four univariate analyses of reaction. However, the MANCOVA revealed a
44 significant multivariate effect of rhetorical structures on reaction, ΛRoy= .250, F (3,134) =
8.31, p < .001, partial η2 = .200. Follow up univariate ANOVAs revealed participants
had a significantly higher affinity to the trailer in the Narrative condition (M = 4.35, SD =
0.82), as compared to the Descriptive (M = 3.54, SD = 1.03), Original (M = 3.79, SD =
0.88) and Control (M = 3.51, SD = .85) conditions, F (3,134) = 6.89, MSerror = 0.797, p
< .001, partial η2 = .134 (see Figure 4). However, there were no significant differences
on viewing desire, viewing intention and sharing intention, as a result of the trailer
conditions. Table 1
Bivariate Correlations (Pearson’s R) between Affinity, Viewing Desire, Viewing Intention
and Sharing Intention.
Affinity
Viewing
Viewing
Sharing
Desire
Intention
Intention
.579**
.406**
.861**
.692**
Affinity
--
.552**
Viewing Desire
--
--
Viewing Intention
--
--
--
.700**
Sharing Intention
--
--
--
--
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2 – tailed).
45 7 Comprehension
6 5 4 3 2 1 Narrative
Descriptive
Original
Control
Figure 2. Comprehension of Plot Elements across Rhetorical Structures. Higher mean
Comprehension
values indicate higher comprehension
5.2
5
4.8
4.6
4.4
4.2
4
3.8
3.6
3.4
3.2
3
2.8
2.6
2.4
2.2
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Narrative
Descriptive
Original
Control
Figure 3. Comprehension of Theme across Rhetorical Structures. Lower mean values
indicate higher comprehension
46 5 Affinity
4 3 2 1 Narrative
Descriptive
Original
Control
Figure 4. Affinity towards the trailer across Rhetorical Structures. Higher mean values
indicate higher affinity.
47 Path Analysis from Personality to Sharing a Trailer
From an applied point of view, we reasoned that it was important to establish a
possible path, starting from when an individual views a trailer to the individual sharing
the trailer, as this is the focus of marketing movie trailers—to incur cinema attendance.
Therefore, a path analysis was constructed to address this issue.
Seven variables were included in the path analysis. These variables were: the
“openness” and “conscientiousness” personality traits of the participants viewing the
trailer, theme comprehension of the movie trailer, feelings of the participant viewing the
trailer when coming into the situation (participants’ world view), affinity towards the
trailer, intention to view the film after watching the trailer, and intention to share the
trailer.
We selected these variables and constructed a path model based partly on
theoretical views and partly on correlations calculated between these variables (see
Tables 1 and 2). Personality types were used as our two exogenous variables because: 1)
they are stable and fixed—they are not influenced by situations (but rather, influence
reactions towards situations) (DeYoung, 2011), 2) they are correlated, but are not caused
by each other, and 3) openness—being strongly linked to intelligence—was a predictor of
theme comprehension, (R = .178, F (1,136) = 4.46, p = .036, with 3.2% of the variance
accounted for), and 4) conscientiousness was a predictor of an individual’s worldview (R
= .177, F (1,137) = 4.43, p = .037, with 3.1% of the variance accounted for). We chose
theme and worldview as endogenous variables specifically because comprehension leads
to positive or negative reactions towards a film (Tan, 2013), and having a similar
48 worldview as the author can be assumed to influence comprehension of the themes of the
author. All paths from theme lead to affinity as a strong predictor of viewing intention,
and ultimately, sharing intention (for the path model, see Figure 5).
Table 2
Bivariate Correlations (Pearson’s R) between Conscientiousness, Openness,
Agreeableness, Worldview, Plot Elements, Plot Sequence, Theme, Affinity, Viewing
Desire, Viewing Intention and Sharing Intention.
Conscientiousness
Conscient-
Open-
Agree-
World
Plot
Plot
iousness
ness
ableness
View
Elements
Sequence
--
Openness
.224**
.031
-.177*
--
-.129
-.186**
--
-.092
--
Agreeableness
Worldview
Plot Elements
Theme
-.142
-.076
.031
.077
.065
-.178*
.100
-.141
-.018
.025
-.029
.169*
.317**
-.024
--
Plot Sequence
--
Theme
-.043
--
Affinity
.209*
.252**
.024
-.120
.077
-.061
-.250**
Viewing Desire
.181*
.188*
.102
-.017
.017
-.017
-.066
Viewing Intention
.262**
.214*
.053
-.062
-.036
-.030
-.166
Sharing Intention
.180*
.080
.092
-.006
.001
-.031
-.147
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2 – tailed).
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2 – tailed).
49 The variables in our model accounted for 49.9% of the variance, with a final error
term of .71. However, while openness correlated with sharing intention -.072, the model
implies a total effect of only .0146. In addition, conscientiousness correlated with sharing
intention .180, but the path model implies a total effect of only .0024 (see Table 3). Thus,
the model seems to underestimate the correlations between the two personality types and
sharing intention, and is therefore not a good fit for the prediction. Therefore, the
personality type of an individual and the individuals’ comprehension of the themes of a
movie trailer is not enough to lead an individual to share the trailer.
Table 3
Calculations in the path analysis from personality types to sharing intentions
Variable
OpennessSharing
Intention
Conscientious
– Sharing
Intention
Direct
Effect
Variables
Indirect Effect
0.0146
.080
Indirect 1 (openness-theme-affinityviewing intention-sharing intention)
0.0024
.180
Indirect 1 (conscientiousness-worldviewtheme-affinity-viewing intention-sharing
intention)
50 Figure 5. A path analysis from personality types to sharing intention. β indicates the predictive value of the predicting variable and error (e) indicates error or other variance not accounted for by the predicting variable. 51 CHAPTER V
DISCUSSION
Overview
We sought to measure students’ attention to, comprehension of, and reactions
towards, four different movie trailers manipulated for rhetorical structure—narrative,
descriptive, original and control. The results revealed a mixed picture of the influence of
rhetorical structure on the three outcomes of film trailer viewing.
Since no differences were observed in participant’s attention to the four trailer
conditions, it allowed us to effectively measure differences in comprehension and
audience reaction between the trailer structures. Comprehension of the trailer, as
measured by the number of plot elements viewers derived, was influenced by the
narrative, descriptive and control trailer structures significantly more than the original
structure of the film. However, there was no significant difference between the trailer
structures for comprehension of plot sequence. In both measures, worldview was not a
significant covariate. The narrative structure had a significantly stronger influence on
comprehension of theme, compared to the other three structures. For theme, worldview
was a significant covariate. The narrative structure also had a stronger influence on
audience affinity towards the trailer, compared to the other three structures, and
worldview was not a significant covariate. For application purposes, we proposed a
model of possible cause-effect relationships from personality types to sharing intention.
Our variables accounted for approximately half of the variance of sharing intention, but
52 the path model itself underestimated the correlations between sharing intention and
personality types.
Narrative structure and Comprehension
Our first hypothesis was partially supported; namely, that participants viewing the
trailer within the narrative structure would have better comprehension of the plot and
themes of the trailer. Participants in the narrative structure did not have a better
comprehension of plot elements and plot sequence than participants in the other three
conditions, but they did have a better comprehension of theme than participants in the
other three conditions.
We expected the narrative structure to have a significantly higher influence on
audience comprehension of plot elements and plot sequence than the other three trailer
conditions. This influence was expected to occur because of the shared temporal nature of
the narrative structure and the plot (Bordwell, 2013; Chatman, 1990). Additionally, we
reasoned that plot elements that were emphasized at the higher rhetorical relations in the
narrative structure would be more accurately and easily recalled and comprehended than
elements at lower levels of the rhetorical hierarchy (Meyer, 1975). The results did not
support our hypothesis. Instead, the narrative, descriptive and control conditions were
equally effective in influencing comprehension of plot elements. A possible explanation
for comprehension being equal across the three structures may lie in the nature of a
film—that is, whether a film is non-fiction, or fiction.
A non-fiction film relates real-life events in the correct order as the events
happen. Thus, audience members of a non-fiction film have to construct a correct mental
53 model of the timeline of the real-life events depicted in the film (Chatman, 1990;
Johnson-Laird, 1983; Meyer, 1975). For any film, the narrative structure—or the direct
storytelling of the sequence of events in correct temporal order—is therefore more crucial
in conveying the timeline of events in a non-fiction film, as compared to a fiction film.
(Chatman, 1990; Tan, 2013). In a fiction film, the author has the freedom to decide what
events happen, in what sequence they happen, and how these events happen. A fictionfilm author is therefore unrestricted in conveying his or her intentions using different
structures—such as descriptive, cause-effect, comparisons—or a combination thereof. It
thus seems likely that in the case of a fiction film, any structure can effectively influence
plot comprehension. Correct comprehension is then dependent on how clear the author
makes his or her intentions through the structure, and with what situation model an
audience member interprets the film (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Meyer, 1999).
Therefore, any rhetorical structure can be effective in influencing shared meaning, but
this shared meaning is also influenced by the nature of the topic itself and the interaction
with the situation model of an audience member. Thus, it is not surprising that the
narrative, descriptive and control trailer structures in our investigation were equal in
influencing comprehension, and only had an advantage over the no structure or original
condition of the film trailer used in this investigation.
A possible explanation for the significant advantage of the narrative, descriptive
and control conditions over the original condition in influencing comprehension of plot
elements lies in the manipulation of our trailer conditions. As supported by research (cf.
Smith et al., 1985), both children and adults prefer short films with segments, or cut
sequences. This is because a lengthy montage has too many transitions that may not be
54 comprehended in fragments—making overall comprehension more difficult. The original
condition was the only one left un-manipulated, and therefore was not segmented in any
way. Therefore, we viewed the narrative, descriptive and control structure—all
segmented—as being more optimal than the original structure for comprehension.
According to the definition of plot, comprehending plot sequence is illogical
without a correct comprehension of plot elements. Thus, we would expect comprehension
of plot sequences to be better in the narrative, descriptive and control condition, than the
original condition because more plot elements were remembered in these three
conditions. However, there were no significant differences in comprehension of plot
sequence between the four conditions. Here we reason that comprehension can be
subjective, based on the situation model an individual has of the topic within the trailer
(van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Although plot elements were interpreted correctly as facts
within the trailer, some of these plot elements could have been interpreted as happening
in different orders by different individuals, depending on what rhetorical structure and
situation models the viewers constructed during viewing (Meyer, 1975). Therefore, plot
element placement in a timeline would be up to a viewer’s subjective interpretation, and
not always as the author intended.
We also expected the narrative structure to have a significantly higher influence
on audience comprehension of theme compared to the other three trailer conditions. We
reasoned that plot elements that were made concrete in the rhetorical relations of the
narrative structure would lead to easier comprehension of plot, and therefore easier
comprehension of the higher level idea or “theme” of the story (Meyer, 1975). Results
supported this prediction, with the narrative structure having a significantly stronger
55 influence on comprehension of theme, compared to the other three structures. The
findings from this investigation provide strong evidence that the comprehension of
rhetorical relations leads to the correct interpretation or comprehension of higher order
ideas, and therefore a correct mental model of the topic as intended by the author (Meyer,
1975).
We expected an individual’s pre-conceived views of a particular topic, based on
their situation model of the topic, to influence the extent to which the individual
comprehended the topic. We therefore controlled for participants’ worldview when
measuring comprehension and this “worldview” was based relative to the kinds of
impressions and concepts the author predicted would be stimulated in viewers when
watching the film. Worldview was not a significant covariate for plot comprehension, but
was a significant covariate for theme. Since Chatman, (1990) contends that the plot of a
movie deals with a sequence of events and acts as the facts in a film, we assumed that
plot would be interpreted objectively. However, the theme of a movie is not expressed as
a fact, but as the underlying ideas that go beyond the action of the plot, revealing the
intent of the author. Thus, since the theme of a film is not explicitly stated, we can
assume that audience members subjectively interpreted the theme, contingent upon their
worldview.
Narrative Structure and Reactions
Our second hypothesis was also partially supported; namely, that participants
viewing the trailer within the narrative structure would have stronger reactions to the
trailer.
56 We expected participants in the narrative condition to have higher affinity
towards the trailer, higher desire to watch the film on which the trailer was based, higher
intention to watch the film, and higher intention to share the trailer. Our expectation was
supported by the data. Audience members in the narrative condition had a higher affinity
towards the trailer, compared to the other three conditions. This finding is supported by
previous research showing that comprehension, resulting from resolved intellectual
activity as a result of optimum arousal and a conclusive narration, can increase affinity
towards a text (Phillips, 2000; Tan, 2013). The narrative structure had a high mean
comprehension of both plot and theme. Thus, higher plot and theme scores, as indices of
comprehension, suggest that the narrative structure had optimal intellectual activity and
stimulation, which increased the viewers’ affinity to the topic and the trailer.
Additionally, previous research has shown that as editing of a film becomes more linear,
judgments of affinity towards the characters and judgments of affinity towards the film as
a whole become more positive (Cowen, 1988). Additionally, it is possible that audience
members who understood the theme of the author were more likely to appreciate and like
the theme, and therefore have higher affinity toward it—at least in the narrative trailer.
This result shows the importance of using a trailer to convey the theme of a film, and not
just the plot.
There was no significant influence of the narrative structure on viewing desire,
viewing intention and sharing intention, compared to the other three structures. We make
sense of this finding based on existing research of film trailers and movie attendance.
Specifically, Kernan (2004) and Hixson (2005) both claim that “an original, innovative
and comprehensive” film trailer is one that has the ability to motivate cinema attendance;
57 in our investigation, we measured viewing and sharing intentions as indices of cinema
attendance. Our results show plot comprehension as being equal across all three
conditions. Therefore, each condition was as likely as the next to motivate audience
members to want to see the film and share the trailer of it.
Additionally, our investigation does not focus on what an “original” or
“innovative” film trailer entails; therefore, we can assume that predictions of movie
attendance is more diverse than the scope of our current investigation. This could also
explain why worldview was not a significant covariate on any of the four audience
reactions; essentially, there seems to be more variables in the relationship between
rhetorical structures, an audience’s comprehension thereof, and an audience’s reactions to
a film trailer.
Path Model
From an applied point of view, we reasoned that it was important to establish a
possible path, starting from when an individual views a trailer to the individual sharing
the trailer, as this is the focus of marketing movie trailers—to incur cinema attendance.
Therefore, a path analysis was constructed to address this issue. The variables we
examined were the personality types of ‘openness’ and ‘conscientiousness’ as our starting
exogenous variables; theme comprehension, worldview, affinity, and viewing intention
were the variables along the path model; and, intention to share the trailer was our final
endogenous variable.
Our path model did account for a high percentage of variance in predicting
cinema attendance. This was due to the variables within the model—such as personality,
58 comprehension, worldview (or topic opinions) and affinity—encompassing the possible
factors that might affect an individual when deciding to share a trailer. However, what
our model did not account for was possible other factors relating to the recipient or the
medium with which the trailer would be shared. Non-empirical research of viral videos
have proposed models considering the relationship—and the sender’s evaluation
thereof—between the sender and recipient of the shared video. We also need to consider
the medium available to share the trailer; do the participants intend to share the trailer
online, via email, on a social media site, etc.? Our measures of audience reactions were
not strong enough individually to claim to measure a phenomenon such as sharing
intention or viewing intention; therefore, a possible modification for future research
would be to form a composite variable of “reaction” using the four measures and going
forward with this composite variable to measure audience reaction—both as a function of
rhetorical structure and as an endogenous variable in a path analysis. The reaction
measures in the current investigation meant the path model underestimated correlations
between personality types and sharing a trailer. However, all four of the reaction
measures were strongly correlated to one another (see Table 1); therefore, further
investigations can focus on how to increase one, in order to increase the others.
Limitations and Implications
In conclusion, the results of this investigation provide strong evidence that the
rhetorical structure has a clear influence on comprehension of higher-level ideas of a
story, such as the theme, and this translates across mediums, such as film trailers. The
author of a trailer must therefore ensure that the rhetorical relations of the trailer structure
effectively convey the themes of the film, as much as the plot of the film; whereas plot
59 comprehension can predict cinema attendance, theme comprehension can increase
audience affinity towards the trailer, and it is affinity that can predict viewing desires and
intentions, and sharing intentions.
However, shared meaning—or correct comprehension—is dependent on the
interaction between the reader and the film. The author can only structure their film
trailer in a way they determines to be most effective in conveying the topic and what they
want the audience to feel about the topic. The other factor involved in comprehension is
the situation model of an audience member, of which we did not measure. Measuring the
background knowledge of the audience members of this film topic could have explained
some differences in comprehension between audience members, regardless of, or in
addition to, the rhetorical structure.
Because of time and permission constraints, the present investigation did not
control for the audiovisuals of the trailer, which were identical between conditions. This
could have affected the comprehension of plot and theme. Visual and auditory
information is perceived simultaneously in a film, and their relationship from shot to
shot, and from scene to scene, affects the interpretation of a film in the mind of an
audience member (Cowen, 1988). These audiovisuals in our film trailer could have been
different than just narrative or descriptive in their rhetorical relationships, thus competing
with the effect of the narrative or descriptive text that was superimposed on them. As
Huck, Helper and Hickman (1987) stated, “in a well designed book…both the
illustrations and the text must bear the burden of narration” (p. 197). Additionally, we
did not compare in our experimental conditions rhetorical structures beyond those that are
narrative and descriptive. This could be a strong point for further research; to compare
60 more rhetorical structures against one another in the comparison of an identical film
topic.
However, despite these limitations, the present investigation provided strong
evidence that a segmented montage is more effective in comprehension of the topic than
one that is not segmented. Further investigations into the effect of rhetorical structures
that encompass both text and audiovisuals on segmented trailers would add valuable
information in the relatively novel field of film comprehension, allowing stronger links
between text and film comprehension to be established.
Overall, research into the various influences of different rhetorical structures of
film trailers has received very little empirical attention. The present study has important
implications in translating research that has so far been done only in text comprehension
onto film comprehension. Future investigations into how to edit and organize film trailers
to influence the audience members’ comprehension and reactions would be of value for
both film marketing and the general field of film research.
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