Effects of Presentation Order andCommunication Modality on Recalland Attitude

H. RAO UNNAVAROBERT E.BURNKRANTSUNIL EREVELLES*

Previous consumer research has attributed differences in persuasion between com-munication modes (e.g.. audio vs. print) to differences in the audiences control overthe pace of argument presentation. It is argued in this article that communicationmodes also differ in the extent to vt/hich argument order is an important determinantof persuasion. The results of two studies show that, while order of argument pre-sentation affects persuasion with audio messages, order is unimportant with printmessages. These differences appear to be due to a first-in-first-out retrieval strategyemployed in response to audio presentations but not in response to visual presen-tations. Implications of the research for understanding how consumers processmessages and how to develop effective communications are discussed.

C ommunication modality (e.g.,, whether an ad ispresented in audio or print) has received some but

not a great deal of attention in the consumer behaviorliterature. In one of the earlier treatments, Wright(1974) argued that print communications may resultin greater elaboration than taped communications be-cause the opportunity to think about the message andgenerate arguments is much greater with print thantaped messages. In accordance with this perspective,researchers have generally concluded that, by being self-paced, visual presentation provides the audience withgreater opportunity to elaborate than radio. This en-hanced elaboration of information leads to greaterlearning and more persuasion when information is pre-sented in print than through radio (Chaiken and Eagly1976; Gunter 1985; Pezdek. Lehrer, and Simon 1984).

However. Furnham and Gunter (1989) found thatprint information was recalled better than radio infor-mation even when the exposure time for each mediumwas equated and controlled. Jacoby, Hoyer, and Zim-

* H. Rao Unnava is associate professor of marketing and RobertBurnkrant is professorofmarketlng. both at the Ohio State University.1775 College Road. Columbus. OH 43210. Sunil Erevelles is assistantprofessor of marketing at University of California. Riverside. Grad-uate School of Management. University of California. Riverside, CA92521. 1 he authors thank Joe Alba. John Lynch, Terry Shimp, andPaul Miniard for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of thismanuscript. The helpful commenls of Kent Monroe through the re-view process are gratefully acknowledged. All correspondence withregard to this manuscript should be addressed to the first author.

481

mer (1983) found that miscomprehension was lowerfor print media than for auditory or audiovisual media,and equating presentation times did not alter these re-sults. Thus, modality differences appear to go beyondwhat can be accounted for by an opportunity to elab-orate explanation.

Recent advances in psychology suggest that each in-put modality (e.g., print, audio) contains unique char-acteristics and people encode this modality-specificcontent when they process information. One form ofinformation likely to be processed with an audio pre-sentation is the order of information. As a result, a per-son may find it difficult to get to the third line of a songthat he or she has often heard without accessing the firsttwo lines of that song. On the other hand, people ex-posed visually to the Wendy's trademark may remem-ber the font used by Wendy's restaurants, and this maycontribute to the belief that they make old-fashionedhamburgers. These and other modality-specific formsof communication have received little attention in theconsumer behavior literature, and yet they may affectconsumer ability to recall information and form judg-ments based on that information.

The objective of this article is to investigate the notionthat certain aspects of stimulus information are encodeddifferently depending on whether information is pre-sented visually or auditorily. We focus specifically onthe order of presentation and examine the persuasiveeffects of advertising information that is presented indifferent orders, as a function of the modality of pre-sentation. Ordering of arguments in the copy of an ad

1994 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, lnt,»Vot. 21 •December 1994All rights reserved, OO93-53OI/95/2l0.1-O007$2,00

482 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

is an important message strategy decision (Belch andBelch 1993, p. 241). Should the most important argu-ments be placed first or last for enhanced effectiveness?Is this decision dependent on the medium of commu-nication? The answer to these questions depends on.among other factors, whether order of presentation af-fects retrieval of information and whether this effectdiffers for auditory and visual presentations.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Modality and Order of PresentationWhile the bulk of past research has focused on the

attention and information-processing effects of variousmedia, some recent research in psychology has identi-fied fundamental encoding differences between printand audio information processing. Specifically, it hasbeen found that memory for the order of presentationof information is greater when the information is pre-sented auditorily than visually. The reason for auditorysuperiority in memory for order of presentation is as-sumed to be a better representation of order informationin mental codes that result from auditory than visualpresentations (Glenberg and Swanson 1986).

Auditory superiority in memory for order of presen-tation was tested by Metcalfe, Glavanov, and Murdock(1981), who exposed subjects to three-word chunks ei-ther auditorily or visually. Subjects were later asked torecall the order of the presented information, and it wasfound that auditory subjects were more accurate in theirtemporal judgments than visual subjects. Similar resultswere obtained by Glenberg and Fernandez (1988). Bothof these studies suggest that order is more likely to beencoded when subjects are exposed to informationthrough an auditory mode than when they are exposedto information visually. As a result, order should alsobe more available for use as a retrieval cue when subjectsare exposed to information auditorily than visually.

The use of information about the order of presen-tation in memory tasks was tested in one study by Jak-imik and Glenberg (1990). who presented subjects withsets of sentences either in print or auditorily. After ex-posure to each set. subjects were quizzed on the contentsof that set in a manner that required them to retrievethe presentation order of the sentences. For example,a sentence might describe two types of sounds a birdmakes under different conditions. The question wouldthen ask the subjects to retrieve the first-mentioned orthe last-mentioned sound. Clearly, in order to answerthe question, subjects would be required to retrieve theinformation and the order in which it was presented.Results indicated that subjects who heard the infor-mation were faster and more accurate than subjects whoread the information in answering questions. Thus, itappears that auditory presentations facilitate storageand use of order information.

Jakimik and Glenberg's (1990) findings show thatwhen a given task requires access to presentation order,

subjects perform the task better with auditory than vi-sual presentation. However, this finding is of limitedinterest to consumer researchers, because it is task spe-cific and may not replicate under different task condi-tions (e.g., free recall). In other words, presentation or-der and modality are of consequence to an advertisingresearcher if they affect subjects" retrieval strategies inmore general tasks such as free recall. Evidence thatmodality and order interact in determining the retrievalstrategies that people use was provided by O'Connorand Hermelin (1972). In their study, the authors in-vestigated whether subjects' retrieval strategies are de-pendent on the types of cues available to them and thepresentation modality. It was found that when infor-mation was presented auditorily, subjects were morelikely to use order of presentation as a retrieval cueeven when other cues were available to them. Con-versely, the likelihood of use of spatial cues was greaterwhen information was presented visually.

The research reviewed above supports the positionthat when information is presented auditorily, order isencoded and used in retrieval tasks. However, to thispoint, no empirical research has shown the effect of thisencoding of order on the order of recall. We proposein this research that an order effect will be forthcomingwhen recall and attitudes are examined. The simplest,most straightforward order is likely to be a first-in-first-out procedure. That is, when order is used as a retrievalcue, subjects may attempt to retrieve information inthe order in which it was presented.'

The idea that the order of recall is affected by theorder of presentation for auditory, but not visual, mo-dality has important implications for attitude formationin consumer settings. If the information pertains to theattributes of a product, and a person judges the productbased on these attributes, then the judgment is affectedby whichever attributes are retrieved from memory.Further, prior research indicates that attributes that areretrieved first have a disproportionately greater impact

' The bin model proposed by Wyer and Srull (1986) suggests thatinformation about a person is stored in the form of a push-downstack such that the items encountered last will have a higher probii-bility of recall (last-in-firsl-out principle). However, this type of a"recency" effect is more likely when the learning measures are ad-ministered immediately after exposure to information. The inclusionof distractor tasks between learning and testing have shown this typeof a recency effect to diminish significantly (e.g., Greene 1986). An-other situation in which the last-in-first-out principle may apply tolong-term recall is when the individual items are encoded at differentpoints in time. Under these conditions, the items encoded last willhave less opportunity to decay and therefore may be recalled witli ahigher probability (e.g., Neath and Crowder 1990). In our research.subjects encountered information about several distractor productsafter they had been exposed to the target information all at once.Thus, both types of recency effects discussed above do not apply tothis study, and, therefore, a recency effect is not expected. Finally,the bin model does not differentiate between visual and auditory pre-sentations, while more recent research has reported reliable differencesbetween various presentation modalities.

MODALITY AND ORDER EFFECTS IN PERSUASION 483

on judgment (see Sherman et al. 1983). Thus, order ofrecall is an important determinant of one's judgment.

Memory-based JudgmentsConsumers make memory-based judgments when

they form evaluations about products by recalling whatthey previously learned about the product through ad-vertising and other sources. It is assumed that duringexposure to information, consumers process it in anonevaluative mode; that is, the information is com-prehended, but no attitudes toward the product areformed. Under these circumstances, their evaluation isdependent on what they are able to retrieve from mem-ory. In one study that examined the relationship be-tween recall and attitudes, Lichtenstein and Srull (1987)found that when subjects processed information abouta person without intending to form evaluations, theirlater evaluations were correlated significantly with theinformation they recalled about the person. It was alsofound that the recall-attitude correlations decreasedsteadily as information that was recalled in the laterparts of their recall protocols was correlated with atti-tudes. In other words, while attitudes are dependent onthe information that is recalled, they appear to be drivenmore by the more salient aspects of the attitude object,which are recalled at the very beginning of recall pro-tocols.

I • •

HypothesesThe foregoing discussion suggests that when judg-

ments are memory based, then it is not just the contentsof memory, but what occurs at the top of one's mindthat has a greater impact on judgments. Thus, the judg-ment rendered by a person about a product can be af-fected by influencing what comes to the top of that per-son's mind regarding that product. In a prior section,we have reviewed evidence in support of the propositionthat when information is presented auditorily, the orderof presentation is more likely to act as a recall cue thanwhen information is presented visually. Therefore, itshould be possible to affect memory-based judgmentswhen subjects are exposed to information auditorily byvarying the order in which the information is presented.If strong arguments are presented first, and subjects fol-low a first-in-first-out retrieval rule, judgments shouldbe more positive than if strong arguments are presentedlast. On the other hand, because temporal order is notan important determinant of recall for visually pre-sented information, the order of presentation of argu-ments should not affect order of retrieval, and attitudes,under this communication modality.

HI: Order of presentation of message argumentswill affect the order of recall of those argu-ments and attitude when the information ispresented auditorily and is processed in anonevaluative mode.

The retrieval of visually presented informationshould be affected less by presentation order. The re-search reviewed above indicated that order of presen-tation is less likely to be encoded and used in retrievalwhen information is presented visually. Instead, the useof spatial cues (e.g.. font size, location on a page) inretrieving visual information has been reported by sev-eral researchers (e.g., Baum and Jonides 1979). TheO'Connor and Hermelin (1972) study described earlieris a nice example of the preference people have for spa-tial over presentation order cues when information ispresented visually. Therefore, presentation order shouldhave minimal eftect on retrieval for visual presentationof information. Thus:

H2: Order of presentation of information will notaffect subsequently reported recall order orattitude when the information is presentedvisually and is processed in a nonevalualivemode.

In experiment 1, we investigated the effects of changesin order of presentation on subjects' attitude toward anadvertised product. The effects of changes in order ofpresentation on the order of recall of individual ele-ments of the advertisement, and their mediating effectson attitude formation, were tested in experiment 2.

EXPERIMENT 1

Design and SubjectsThe moderating role of message modality on the ef-

fects of varying order of information presentation onattitudes was examined in a 2 (modality: auditory vs.visual presentation) X 2 (argument strength: strongvs. weak) X 2 (order: strong arguments first vs. weakarguments first) between-subjects design. Argumentstrength was varied in order to show differences in sub-jects' attitudes depending on whatever is retrieved first.By changing argument strength within a message, andplacing strong or weak arguments first, we can affectthe valence of whatever is retrieved first. If subjects recallstrong arguments first, then their attitudes should bemore positive than if they recall weak arguments first.Thus, subjects' attitudes should indicate which part ofthe message was retrieved first.

Two hundred subjects recruited from undergraduateintroductory marketing classes participated in the studyfor extra course credit. The study was conducted in sev-eral sessions of up to four subjects in each. Subjectswithin a session were exposed to the target ad in eitherthe auditory or the visual modality.

Stimulus MaterialsA set of eight advertisements was used as experimen-

tal stimuli. Seven of the eight ads were fillers used toprevent subjects from paying excessive attention to the

484 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

target ad that might have caused overlearning. The adsdescribed products that were of general interest to thestudent population (e.g., tennis racquet, portable radio).The target ad described a new book bag (Vanguard).This ad was placed in the fifth position in the set ofeight ads.

Experimental ManipulationsArgument Strength. The target ad consisted of two

parts. One part described three intrinsic attributes ofVanguard book bag (tear-proof, water resistant, threestorage areas). This part remained constant across alltreatment conditions. A second part that described threeextrinsic attributes of the book bag was used to vary theargument quality. For the strong argument condition,the book bag was mentioned as being available exclu-sively at Marshall Field's (perceived as a high-qualitystore where the experiment was conducted), that thebag carried a warranty of 10 years, and that the priceof the bag was $29.95. For the weak arguments con-dition, the book bag was advertised with a warranty ofone month and was described as being available at K-Mart for $5.95. This manipulation of argument strengthwas based on prior research that has shown that people'sperceptions of product quality are affected by variablessuch as price and store image (Rao and Monroe 1989).

Order. The manipulation of presentation order wasaccomplished by placing the extrinsic attributes eitheras the first half or as the second half of the target ad.The two versions of the ad that resulted from the ordermanipulation, combined with the argument strengthmanipulation, resulted in four versions of the target ad.

Modality. For the visual modality condition, theads were typed on separate sheets of paper. The brandname was typed as a header on each page. For auditorypresentation, the target ad and the seven filler ads wereread into a tape in the same order as they appeared inthe visual modality condition. The brand name was an-nounced prior to the reading of the copy for each brand.There was a five-second pause between successive ads.

ProcedureTo discourage subjects from forming product atti-

tudes, the study was positioned as a pretest of the in-formativeness and believability of advertising claims forvarious products. They were asked to first read through(listen to) all the ads sequentially. They were told thattheir opinions about the believability and informative-ness of each ad would be collected after they had com-pleted reading (listening to) all the ads. Thus, subjects'attention was directed away from product evaluationand toward claim evaluation.

The time of exposure was controlled in the visualpresentation condition to be equal to the time of au-ditory presentation (25 seconds per ad). This precaution

was taken so that differences in elaboration of stimulusinformation between auditory and visual presentationconditions would be minimized and is consistent withother studies that have controlled exposure times forvisual and auditory presentations (e.g.. Jacoby et al.1983).

After exposure to the ads, subjects were given a ques-tionnaire. The first question measured subjects' attitudetoward the Vanguard book bag (four seven-point scalesanchored by "very bad-very good." "very awful-verynice," "very unattractive-very attractive," "very un-desirable-very desirable." a = 0.78). Then, subjects'ratings of the informativeness, believability, andstrength of the arguments presented in the Vanguardad were measured using seven-point scales ("not at allinformative-very informative," "not at all believable-very believable," and "very weak-very strong." respec-tively). These measures provided credibility to the coverstory, and the last item permitted an assessment of theargument-strength manipulation. Finally, subjects re-sponded to a series of manipulation checks. Dependingon the experimental condition, they rated the qualityof goods available at Marshall Field's or K-Mart ("verylow quality-very high quality"). The perceived price-quality relationship was measured by asking subjectsto indicate their agreement with the statement, "Ingeneral, expensive (less expensive) goods are also ofhigher quality." A seven-point scale anchored by"strongly disagree-strongly agree" was used for thispurpose. A similar question was used to measure theperceived relationship between warranty and quality.Subjects were then thanked and dismissed.

ResultsManipulation Checks. Subjects' evaluation of the

claims in the Vanguard book bag advertisement on the"very weak-very strong" scale were analyzed using aone-way ANOVA with argument strength as the inde-pendent variable. The analysis revealed a significant ef-fect of the argument-strength manipulation (F(1.198)= 30.01, p < .0001). Subjects perceived the strong-ar-gument message to be stronger (X = 5.5) than the weak-argument message (X = 4.1).

A further assessment of subjects' responses to othermanipulation check measures indicated that they per-ceived the qualil y of goods available at Marshall Field'sto be superior {X ^ 5.5) to the quality of goods availableat K-Mart {X = 4,\,p< .05). Higher-priced goods wereseen as higher in quality (A* = 5.0) compared to lower-priced goods (A* = 4.2. p < .05). Finally, higher warrantywas associated with higher product quality (A' =6.1)than was lower warranty (A' = 4.6, p < .05). Thus, itwas concluded that the extrinsic cue manipulation wassuccessful in creating perceived quality differences be-tween subjects in different treatment conditions.

Attitude. The mean attitude score for each subjectwas computed by averaging the scores of the four atli-

MODALITY AND ORDER EFFECTS IN PERSUASION 485

FIGURE 1

ATTITUDE SCORES AS A FUNCTION OF PRESENTATIOM ORDER AND MODALITY

Attitude

5.5

5.3

5.1

4.9

4.7

4.5

4.3

4.1

3.9 -

3.7 -

3.5

Strong Arguments - Visual

Weak Arguments - Visual

Strong Arguments - Auditofy

Weak Arguments - Auditory

First Paragraph Last Paragraph

Argument Placement

tude scales. The first hypothesis called for an interactionbetween order of presentation and argument qualitywhen information was presented in the auditory mo-dality. That is, variations in argument strength wereexpected to affect attitudes difterentlydependitig on theposition ot strong and weak arguments in the message.Hypothesis 2, which addressed visual presentation con-ditions, predicted the absence of an interaction betweenorder of presentation and argument quality. That is.argument strength variation was expected to affect at-titudes similarly irrespective of the position of thosearguments in the message. The mean attitude scores foreach of the experimental conditions are plotted in Fig-ure 1 and reported in Table 1.

The hypothesized effects were tested by conductingan ANOVA. Given the nature of the hypotheses, onlythe argument-strength/main effect terms and the ar-gument-strength/presentation order interaction termsfor each modality were included in the model (see Min-iard. Bhatla, and Rose [1990] for similar analysis pro-cedures). As expected, the analysis revealed a significantmain effect of argument strength on attitudes for bothvisual (F( 1.192) = 131, p < .01) and auditory conditionsubjects (y''(l.I92) - 7.11. ;? < .01). Longer warranty,higher price, and prestigious outlet combined to en-hance subjects' attitudes toward the product.

The analysis also revealed a significant interaction(F( 1,192) = 4.8, p < .05) between presentation orderand argument strength for the auditory modality. Thisinteraction did not even approach significance for thevisual presentation subjects (f(l,I92) = 0.09. p > .5,

Table 2 and Fig. 1). Subjects' attitudes remained thesame whether strong arguments appeared at the begin-ning or the end of the message {X - 5.13 and 5.02,respectively). Similarly, while weak arguments led to alower attitude score, their appearance at the beginningor end of the message did not alter attitudes when sub-jects read them (X 4.55 and 4.54, respectively). Thesignificant interaction for auditory presentation sub-jects, and the absence of an interaction for visual pre-sentation subjects, supported Hypotheses 1 and 2.

The significant interaction obtained in the auditorycondition was examined in greater detail using plannedcontrasts. Multiple /-tests were employed for this pur-pose. The /-tests revealed that subjects' attitudes towardthe book bag were more positive in the strong-argumentcondition (X = 5.06) than in the weak-argument con-dition iX = 4.05; /(45) = 3.5, p < .05) only when thestrong and weak arguments appeared at the beginningof the ad When these arguments appeared at the end.strong {X = 4.8) and weak (X = 4.57) arguments didnot produce different attitudes (K47) < \,p> .2). Thus,a strong primacy effect was obtained.

Discussion

The findings of experiment 1 were supportive of ourexpectations. When different groups of subjects werevisually exposed to information about a book bag indifferent orders, there were no differences in the atti-tudes reported by them. Within the auditory presen-tation condition, the message claims presented at the

486 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

TABLE 1

GROUP MEANS FOR EXPERIMENTS 1 AND 2

Dependent measure

Attitude (experiment 1)

Attitude (experiment 2)

Recall (experiment 2)

SAfirst

5.13(.81)5.22(-87)3,62(1.24)

Visual

SAlast

5.02(.99)5.25(.73)3.67(1,32)

presentation

WAfirst

4.55(1.33)4.22(.96)3.16(1.26)

WAlast

4,54(1,23)4,38(1,08)4.35(1.17)

SAfirst

5.06(.45)5.26(,68)3.28(1.41)

Auditory presentation

SAlast

4.80(1.03)5.20(73)

3.14(1.42)

WAfirst

4.05(96)3.83(1.15)2.80

(1.37)

WAlast

4,57

(.48)468(.87)276

(1.34)

NOTE.—Figures in parentheses are standard deviations; SA and WA indicate strcxig and weak arguments, respectively.

beginning of the advertisement had greater effects onsubjects' attitudes than the claims that occurred towardthe end of the ad. Thus, primacy effects were obtained.

While the findings of experiment 1 were supportiveof our hypotheses, three additional issues need to beaddressed. First, while primacy eifects were detected inexperiment 1, these are attitudinal effects that are ex-pected to be driven by the first few recalled attributes.In order for us to conclude in favor of memory media-tion of these effects, we need to demonstrate similareffects for both attitudes and recall. Specifically, sub-jects' recall protocols should show patterns that aresimilar to their attitude scores, especially when the firstfew items of subjects' protocols are considered. Thus,we would expect the first few items of recall protocolsto reflect what was presented first auditorily. With visualpresentation, recall order should exhibit no reliablepattern with respect to presentation order. Thus:

H3: The attributes presented at the beginning ofa message will be recalled first when infor-mation is presented auditorily.

H4: The attributes presented at the beginning ofa message will not be recalled first when in-formation is presented visually.

Second, the primacy effect that was obtained in ex-periment 1 should be replicated in order for us to con-clude with greater confidence that auditory presenta-tions do seem to promote a first-in-first-out type ofretrieval strategy. Given the dearth of research in thisarea, the value of replication is significantly higher interms of theory development.

Finally, even though the time available to subjectsto read the ad information was limited to 25 secondsin experiment 1, one can still argue that they had moretime than they needed. Further, subjects in the visualcondition had all of the ad information available tothem at once, so they could go back and forth as theyread through it. This behavior of going back and forthwould have contaminated the order of presentation. Incontrast, the auditory condition subjects received the

information sequentially and had no control over theorder of presentation. Thus, one can argue that differ-ential use of order cues may not have caused the effectsreported in experiment I. Rather, it could be the orderin which they were processed. The visual conditionsubjects might have mixed up the order of argumentsas they went back and forth in a relatively randommanner. This would have minimized the predictivenessof the order cue. For auditory condition subjects, how-ever, the order cue might have been more predictive ofthe order of presentation because they had no optionbut to process in the order in which the arguments werepresented. Thus, our effects may be attributable to pre-sentational differences rather than to differences in theencoding of order information for each modality. Theseconcerns are addressed in the study that is reported next.

EXPERIMENT 2The design and procedures used in this study were

identical to those of experiment 1 with a few changesto address the issues raised earlier. First, for the visualmodality manipulation, rather than typing an entire adon one page, we presented only one sentence per pageand instructed subjects to not turn back to a previouspage. The first page contained the brand name and eachsubsequent page contained one sentence about theproduct. A blank page separated one ad from the other.This type of presentation was employed to ensure thatsubjects in the visual presentation conditions processedarguments in the same manner as subjects in the au-ditory conditions. Because the subjects could not turnback to previous pages, the order of presentation wasmaintained. Thus, it cannot be argued that the differ-ences obtained between visual and auditory conditionsare due to the visual condition subjects' processing thearguments out of order. A similar manipulation hasbeen employed to eliminate differences between visualand auditory presentations by Eddy and Glass (1981).

One hundred fifty-four subjects recruited from un-dergraduate marketing classes participated in the studyfor extra course credit. The study was conducted in sev-

MODALITY AND ORDER EFFECTS IN PERSUASION 487

TABLE 2

ANOVA SUMMARIES FOR EXPERIMENTS 1 AND 2:ATTITUDE MEASURE

Source

Experiment 1:Within cellsS(V)S(A)S X 0 (V)S X 0 (A)

Experiment 2:Within e^llsS(V)S(A)S X 0 (V)S X 0 (A)

Sum ofsquares

186.047,146.89

.094.61

114,715.236.44

.103.75

df

1921111

1451111

X

.977.146.89

.094.61

.795.236.44

.103,71

F

7.377.11

.094.76

6.618.15

.124,69

P

,007.008.762.030

.011,006,726,032

NOTE,—S (V) and S (A) represent Itie effect of argument strength in the visualand auditory presentation conditions, respeclively; S X O (V) and S X 0 (A)represent the interaction between argument strength and presentation order inthe visual and auditory conditions, respectively.

eral sessions of up to four subjects per session. Subjectswithin a session were exposed to the stimulus materialseither auditorily or visually; instructions and other pro-cedures were identical to those used in experiment 1.

After exposure to the ads, subjects were given a ques-tionnaire. The first question measured subjects' attitudetoward the Vanguard book bag (four seven-point scalesanchored by "very bad-very good," "very awful-verynice," "very unattractive-very attractive." "very un-desirable-very desirable," a ^ 0.92). Then, subjects'ratings of the informativeness, believability, and thestrength of the arguments presented in the Vanguardad were measured using seven-point scales ("'not at allinformative-very informative," "not at all believable-very believable," and "very weak-very strong." respec-tively). These measures provided credibility to the coverstory, and the last item permitted an assessment of theargument-strength manipulation. A message recallmeasure followed these measures. Subjects were thenthanked and dismissed.

ResultsAttitude. Analysis procedures similar to those in

experiment 1 were followed. As expected, the analysisrevealed a significant main effect of argument qualityon attitudes for both visual (F(l,145) = 6.6, p < .01)and auditory condition subjects (/•'(!.145) = 8.15, p<.0l). Thus, the manipulation of argument qualitythrough the use of extrinsic cues affected subjects' at-titudes significantly (Tables 1 and 2).

The analysis also revealed a significant interaction(F( 1,145) = 4.69, p < .05) between presentation orderand argument quality for the auditory modality. Thisinteraction did not even approach significance for the

visual presentation subjects (F(l,145) < \,p> .5). Vi-sual condition subjects had equally positive attitudeswhen the strong arguments were presented first or last(5.22 vs. 5.25) and lower but equal attitudes when weakarguments were presented first or last (4.22 vs. 4.38).The significant interaction for auditory presentationsubjects, and the absence of an interaction for visualpresentation subjects, resembled the interaction ob-tained in experiment 1 and supported Hypotheses 1and 2.

The significant interaction obtained in the auditorycondition was examined in greater detail using plannedcontrasts. Multiple /-tests were employed for this pur-pose. First, the attitude score when strong argumentswere presented first {X = 5.26) was contrasted with theatjitude score when weak arguments were presented first{X = 3.83). This contrast was significant (/(36) = 4.8,p < .01). The difference in attitude scores when strongor weak arguments were presented in the latter part ofthe message {X = 5.2 and 4.68, respectively) was notsignificant (/(38) < 1.5, p > .1). Thus, consistent withthe findings of experiment I, a significant primacy effectwas obtained when information was presented audi-torily. No such effects were obtained for visual presen-tation.

Recall. The claims made in the book bag adver-tisement were parsed into nine idea units. Each ideaunit reflected an individual meaningful phrase that asubject could recall from the message. Subjects' recallwas then coded based on whether they recalled each ofthese idea units. A score of one was given for every ideaunit recalled by a subject. Two judges coded the recallprotocols and exhibited agreement on 93 percent of thecoded protocols. The disagreements on the remaining7 percent pertained only to which of the idea units wasrecalled, and not to the number of idea units recalled.These disagreements were resolved by mutual discus-sion, and the final score was used for the analyses.

The success of our cover story was examined first.The cover story instructed subjects to rate the experi-mental ads on their believability and informativenessto ensure that attitudes were memory based. Underthese conditions, we would expect a significant corre-lation between recall and attitude because attitudes arecomputed from the information that is recalled aboutthe target product. To test this expectation, subjects'recall protocols had to be recoded. This need arose be-cause a subject may recall only negative informationabout the target product, which will cause his or herattitude to be negative. In this situation, it is inappro-priate to just count the number of claims the subjecthad recalled without considering the valence of what isrecalled. Therefore, subjects in the weak-argumentcondition were awarded a -1 for every weak argumentthat they recalled. The resulting valenced recall scoreswere then correlated with subjects' attitude scores. Thisprocedure is similar to the one employed by Chatto-

488 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

padhyay and Alba (1988), although their research madeuse of the weights given by subjects to each recalledpiece of information.

A significant correlation (r = 0.43, p < .00\) betweensubjects' recall and their attitudes confirmed our ex-pectation and supported the appropriateness of ourcover story manipulation to achieve memory-basedjudgments. This high correlation compares favorablywith that of Lichtenstein and Srull (1987), who obtaineda recall-attitude correlation of 0.34 under memory-based judgment conditions.

As discussed earlier, Lichtenstein and Srull (1987)found that correlations between attitude and recall de-clined progressively as the later parts of subjects' recallprotocols were correlated with attitudes. That is, spon-taneous recall that is gauged by the first few items of arecall protocol is a stronger indicator of memory-basedattitude than overall recall. Similar analyses were doneseparately for auditory and visual condition subjects inthis study. Valenced recall scores based on the first andsecond (A ), the second and third (A - 1), the third andfourth {N - 2), and the fourth and fifth (A - 3) itemsrecalled by subjects were correlated with attitudes.Consistent with Lichtenstein and Srull (1987), the cor-relations exhibited a declining trend for both auditory(r's = 0.65, 0.54, 0.26. and 0.03) and visual conditionsubjects (r's = 0.46, 0.46, 0.34, 0.21 for N, N - \, N- 2, and TV - 3 respectively).

Hypotheses 3 and 4 were tested next by examiningthe differences in recall between visual and auditoryconditions for the N recall scores. The N recall scoresreflected the first two attributes recalled by subjects. Ifthe attributes that appeared at the top of a subject'smind were determinant of his or her attitudes, then wewould expect these recall scores to exhibit a patternsimilar to the attitude data.

Consistent with the attitude data, the interaction be-tween presentation order and argument strength for theTV recall scores was not significant for visual presentationcondition (F(l,141) = 2.08, p > .15). The differencebetween subjects' valenced recall scores for strong andweak argument conditions was the same whether thearguments appeared at the beginning or the end of themessage (0 and 0.17). For the auditory condition, how-ever, there was a significant interaction between pre-sentation order and argument strength (f (1,141) = 4.74,p < .05). The difference between the valenced recallscores for strong and weak arguments was significantlygreater when they were presented at the beginning ofthe message than at the end of the message (0 and 0.51;(36) ^ 2.6, p < .05). These hndings mirrored the atti-

tude data and provided support for Hypotheses 3and 4.

One final set of analyses was conducted to argueagainst a potential alternative explanation for our find-ings. It is possible that despite the limit on ad exposuretime in experiment 1 and due to the absence of timelimits in experiment 2, subjects in the visual presen-

tation condition may have had more time to elaborateon the information. In contrast, auditory presentationmight have loaded up the working memory of subjectswho disregarded the later parts of the message becausethey could not process it. This greater elaboration inthe visual condition, coupled with the inattention tolater parts of the message in the auditory condition,might have resulted in main effects in the former andinteractive effects in the latter conditions. That is, be-cause of greater elaboration, visual condition subjectshad all of the ad information available when they madetheir judgments. On the other hand, the later parts ofthe message were unavailable for the auditory conditionsubjects, which might have caused the observed primacyeffects. This alternative explanation gains credibilitybecause the total recall in the visual condition was sig-nificantly greater (X = 3.68) than in the auditory con-dition (X = 2.9, ;j < .05).

However, the alternative explanation for the primacyeffect observed in this study should predict that the dif-ferences in elaboration of the later parts of the stimulusinformation by the visual and auditory condition sub-jects should result in differences in recall of that infor-mation. That is, if the individual items recalled by sub-jects are analyzed in terms of the position of each itemin the stimulus, we should find no differences betweenauditory and visual conditions for the first few items.For the last few items, however, we should observe vi-sual dominance. To test for this possibility, the indi-vidual items recalled by each subject were coded interms of the position of that item in the message. Forexample, a subject recalling the first and last sentencesin the message would have a positive score (one) for thefirst and last positions and zero scores for all other po-sitions. Because the message was parsed into nine re-callable units, there were nine scores for each subject.Thus, for any given position, each subject would havea one or a zero indicating whether the subject recalledthat item or not.

The dichotomous recall scores for each position werethen examined for differences as a function of presen-tation modality. The results of chi-square analyses didnot support the alternative explanation of differentialelaboration. In general, the visual condition subjectsexhibited a slight superiority in the recall of each of thefirst eight items in the message. For the last item, how-ever, the auditory condition subjects exhibited a small,but nonsignificant, superiority in recall over the visualcondition subjects. Thus, coupled with the recall dataand these additional analyses, the alternative explana-tion of differential elaboration of the later part of themessage by auditory and visual condition subjects canbe ruled out. . v'

DISCUSSIONThe availability of more than one medium for mass

communication has caused several researchers to in-

MODALITY AND ORDER EFFECTS IN PERSUASION 489

quire into the differential effectiveness of. and the causesfor differences between, various media. The present re-search demonstrated that the order of presentation ofinformation affects recall and memory-based attitudeswhen people encounter information auditorily morethan when they are exposed to it visually. Thus, withthe message content remaining constant, differences inpresentation order were reflected in what was retrievedfirst by auditory-presentation-condition subjects but notfor visual-presentation-condition subjects. The recallorder differences between subjects caused their attitudestoward the target product to be different too.

The modality-specific order effects occurred even af-ter we attempted to control for exogenous differencesbetween visual and auditory presentations. One of themajor differences between visual and auditory infor-mation presentation is that the information that is pre-sented auditorily is lost immediately upon presentation.In the visual condition, it is still available to the readerwho may go back to that information and comprehendthe difficult-to-understand parts of it. We reduced thisvisual presentation advantage significantly by limitingthe exposure time or by presenting visual inf^ormationone sentence per page and instructing subjects not togo back to previous sentences. Despite this procedure,differences emerged between visual and auditory pre-sentation conditions.

A major theoretical contribution of this study derivesfrom our demonstration of modality effects when sub-jects u.se the information that they retrieve from mem-ory to form judgments. Consumer researchers have of-ten focused on either memory effects or attitudinaleffects of several variables of interest. Very few re-searchers have attempted to study the effects of variableson memory and how the resulting memory affects judg-ments (e.g.. Chattopadhyay and Alba 1988). The im-portance of this distinction becomes clear when oneobserves that it is not the entire contents of the recallprotocol, but the first few items of what is recalled, thatdetermine attitudes. Thus, it is possible to have subjectsrecall equal amounts in two experimental conditionsbut differ in what they recall at the beginning. A re-searcher focusing only on memory might conclude infavor of absence of differences due to order changesbecause absolute recall scores show no differences.However, when the recalled information is used incomputing attitudes, the order of recall becomes im-portant and affects attitudes.

A second contribution of this research is the intro-duction of a new dependent variable to consumer re-searchers. Despite the knowledge that memory-basedallitudes are determined more by what is retrieved first,consumer researchers have not examined order of recallas a dependent measure of interest. By demonstratingaltitude effects that are determined by the order of recallin certain cases; e.g., auditory messages), and not by

the amount of recall, we have been able to highlight theimportance of this measure.

A third major theoretical contribution stems fromthe relatively long-term nature of our findings. Modalityhas generally been viewed as a surface characteristic ofinformation that has no reliable long-term effects (Roe-diger. Srinivas, and Weldon 1989). The focus of con-sumer researchers has also been on surface differencessuch as control over the pace of presentation for radioversus print. Our study, in contrast, shows that certainproperties of input modality, by being represented inlong-term memory, have effects on performance of taskseven in the long term. This is especially important inview of the controls that we have imposed on otherdifferences between visual and auditory modalities (e.g.,ability to reread information for visual presentations).Past research that has detected differences between me-dia had generally confounded presentational differenceswith possible representational differences. By limitingtime of exposure and by sequencing presentation in vi-sual condition to mimic the auditory condition, we be-lieve we have eliminated such confounds to a large ex-tent.

Our findings have important implications not onlyfor advertising copy writers but also for presenters ofinformation such as teachers and salespersons. Whenthe presentation modality is predominantly auditory,as is the case in radio advertising, or in a typical salespresentation, our findings suggest that one should "putthe best foot forward." That is. under conditions wherethe information receivers are relatively low in their levelof involvement, and therefore would evaluate the in-formation at a later point in time based on what theycan retrieve, it is advantageous to present the most fa-vorable arguments in the beginning. These argumentshave a higher likelihood of being retrieved and used injudgments.

The normal limitations of a laboratory experimentshould preclude one from enthusiastically generalizingthe results of this study to situations confronted by apractitioner. First, only one message was used as thetarget message. While there is no reason to suspect mes-sage-specific characteristics to have influenced our re-sults, especially given that they are interactive, repli-cation of our results with other messages that vary inlength and complexity should bolster confidence in ourfindings. Second, only one exposure of the target adwas given to subjects. In reality, consumers are repeat-edly exposed to advertisements. Whether modality ef-fects are sustained even under repetition is not known.Third, recall and attitude were measured in close con-tiguity in experiment 2; subjects' expression of attitudebefore recall might have affected what was recalled firstand inflated the reported correlations. Future researchshould examine the effects of modality and presentationorder on just recall, without measuring attitudes earlier,to test for the robustness of our findings.

[Received March 1993. Revised February 1994. KentB. Monroe served as editor for this article.]

490 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

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