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In recent years, with the increasing popularity of electronic products such as smartphones and the development of 3G, 4G and even 5G wireless networks, mobile devices have become an important channel for people to access the Internet and obtain information. Mobile Internet has been so deep in our lives that some scholars believe that mobile devices will help many people overcome various physical barriers in the process of connecting to the Internet, and ultimately eliminate the digital divide brought about by information differences.

On the other hand, many studies have shown that mobile devices, while providing people with convenient networking methods, limit users’ perceptions of information, reduce the depth of users’ access to information, and weaken users’ concentration. .

Recently, a research paper in Information, Communication & Society argues that this is caused by the screen size of mobile devices being too small.

Screen: I have already put this pot on it

Small size and ease of use—These features that make mobile devices popular may adversely affect users’ search and access to information, and become a bottleneck that limits user awareness.

Statistics show that information search on mobile devices tends to be narrower and shallower than desktop environments such as computers, and the search terms used are more simplistic and less targeted; once moved The web page returns search results, and users are more inclined to see only the first few results.

In addition, the smaller screen size, the display content is subject to more restrictions, reducing the user’s expectation of information search on mobile devices, making information acquisition more difficult. According to the update iteration rules of electronic products in recent years, the smaller the size of the screen, the more often the performance of this device is worse, and the problems encountered when dealing with complex or data-intensive content are relatively more.

These are the results of many studies that have been done by predecessors, but the authors of this article have summarized an updated and more powerful hypothesis from these studies:

In addition to the inconvenience of searching for information, the ability of users to understand and digest this information is limited on smaller mobile devices.

This hypothesis is that larger screens make it easier for people to immerse themselves, enhance the presence of information on the screen, and evoke the viewer’s resonance, thus significantly reducing the cognitive overhead required for understanding. Conversely, on a smaller screen, the amount of information that users can absorb when watching a video is less, and the fatigue experienced when reading a large amount of text is stronger.

So, how do researchers validate this hypothesis?

Scientists: Let’s design an experiment to see

Today, psychophysiological researchers can test the concentration of subjects by means of heart rate variability (HRV) and skin conductance levels (SCL). In general, subjects with lower concentration have less heart rate variability and lower skin conductivity.

In addition, when the subject watches some unpleasant images, orWhen exposed to negative information, their brain activity will be more pronounced, and heart rate, blood pressure and sweat gland secretion will increase.

To this end, the researchers prepared 10 different news videos, 8 of which were international news and 2 were domestic news. Half of the international news videos (4) are relatively negative information, the other half are relatively positive reports; domestic news is positive and negative.

These videos are carefully selected (not randomly selected) from the BBC International News video to ensure that they are not too time-sensitive, and that such things do not violate at any time.

In the experiment, the subjects sat in a quiet room, sitting at the table, carrying noise-cancelling headphones, attached to the instrument, and watched 7 news on a single computer screen. Two of the top 10 news videos are bound to appear, and the remaining five are randomly selected from eight international news. All of these videos will appear in a random order. There will be a 2-minute gray screen with no content before the first video starts, and each news video will be separated by a 40-second gray screen.

All subjects were randomly divided (by coin toss) into two groups. The only difference between the two groups was the image size of the video on the computer screen. The size of the video in the “big screen” group was about the same size as the laptop screen (13 inches, about 33 cm wide), while the “small screen” group saw an image that was about the size of the phone (4.5 inches, about 11.4 cm wide), although they are placed in front of the same size computer screen.

The very thing about chicken thieves is that although the subjects were allowed to adjust their seats before starting the test so that they could sit more comfortably, the position of the table and computer screenIt was fixed, and the subject was attached to the instrument, and it could not move too far. This avoids situations where the subject is too close or far away from the screen, causing the viewing angle of the viewing video to change too much.

With this design, the researchers are convinced that the main difference between the two groups is the size of the video image.

User: Ask for 65 mobile phones, urgent, online, etc.

The results of the experiment are still very intuitive.

The measured heart rate variability indicator shows that even if the size difference between the two types of pictures is not very large, when watching video news on the big screen, the concentration of the participants is still higher than on the small screen (no For example, if you change it to 65 吋 big color TV next time?).

The standardized skin conductivity level indicator shows that although the results of the large screen group are slightly higher, the difference is not significant. This shows that, regardless of the size of the screen, the overall emotional stimulation of the video is similar.

But if you consider the impact of the video content itself? Shown in the lower right image is the skin conductivity level indicator during the negative news. It can be seen that negative news has more stimuli on the big screen group, resulting in a greater change in the skin’s level of conductivity than the small screen group (although only slightly noticeable).

In general, the results of this study show that compared to large screens like laptopsIn fact, when watching video news on a small screen, the user’s cognitive participation in the content is relatively low, which will also affect the user’s acquisition and absorption of information. Or, in our words, the small screen is a bottleneck that limits the level of user perception in a sense.

This result is not too unexpected, right?

Of course, the researchers also said that there are still some restrictions in this study. For example, in order to reduce the difference between the two groups, only considering the different video sizes, they (intentionally) ignored the “normal” use of the smartphone should be held in the hand, closer to the user’s eyes. Instead of standing on the desktop. In the case of closer distances, the attraction of the user’s attention to the smartphone and the additional information acquisition advantages that the increased viewing angle can bring may affect the final result.

But in any case, the “big screen” used to compare with the screen of a smartphone is only the size of a normal laptop, compared to the 20-27 screen of the current mainstream desktop, or TV. In the case of giant screens with 55, 65 辄, the negative effects of screen reduction are likely to be greater.

Finally, the researchers believe that the results of this study provide us with a strong proof that screen size is a very important factor that may have a significant impact on the perception of certain news content. Therefore, this result will also serve as an important reference for follow-up research in this field.

Reference:

1.Johanna Dunaway & Stuart Soroka (2019): Smartphone-size screens constrain cognitive access to video news stories, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X. 2019.1631367

2.Weidmann, NB, Benitez-Baleato, S., Hunziker, P., Glatz, E., & Dimitropolous, X. (2016). Digital Discrimination: Political bias in Internet service provision and ethnic groups. Science, 353 (6304), 1151–1155.

3.Philip M. Napoli & Jonathan A. Obar (2014) The Emerging Mobile Internet Underclass: A Critique of Mobile Internet Access, The Information Society, 30:5, 323-334, DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2014.944726