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Reading Test 57
Advertising needs attention
The harder advertisers try to get your attention, the more your brain ignores them. Jane Raymond, a consumer psychologist at the University of Wales in Bangor, is carefully holding and gazing at a bottle of Chilli’s mineral water like a baby. Despite being made of clear plastic it has been carved from ice. This simple feature means shoppers are drawn to this bottle over the others on the shelf and cannot resist picking it up, Raymond says. She studies the subtle factors that motivate us to buy what we buy, and advises big companies on how powerful an advertisement is, and how it could be designed to stick more firmly in a consumer’s memory. Most of all she works out how to attract our attention.
In today’s fast-paced consumer world, attention is in short supply. Whether we are taking our time shopping in a mall, surfing the internet for information or just watching television as a form of passive entertainment, we are surrounded by messages—experiencing one every 15 seconds of our waking lives, according to some estimates. Last year, companies worldwide spent $401 billion on advertising, according to the independent World Advertising Research Centre in the UK. But as the graveyard of failed products shows, they usually get it wrong.
Nine out of ten new products meet an early death, says Jamie Rayner, director of research at ID Magasin, a UK consultancy specializing in consumer behaviour. And the reason, he explains, is simple: conventional advertising has ceased to work. Rayner and his colleagues have measured how consumers, in particular regular commuters, react to advertising, and their conclusion should alarm many executives. They use a camera embedded in a pair of glasses to record their gaze as they glanced at advertisements on their journey to and from work. After analyzing the recordings and questioning the subjects, they found that most of the advertisements made no impression at all: only about one per cent could be recalled without prompting. It seems that although we may be looking at brands and advertisements all day long, most of the time we’re not taking anything in.
Raymond thinks she knows why. Her move into research in visual processing into consumer psychology began in the early 1990s, when she discovered some strange behavior in the brain’s attentional system. She showed people a stream of letters and numbers on a screen and asked them to look out for a white letter o or x. When she asked her volunteers afterwards what they had seen, she found that it appeared to them to have a half a second or so after the white letter, or vice versa, people failed to see it. She concluded that if something catches your attention, your brain is blind to anything else for a short period afterwards. She called this effect the ‘attentional blink’. In short, the reason most advertising doesn’t work is that we’re in a state of attentional overload. Unless advertising is presented in a way the brain can absorb, it is simply not seen, Raymond says.
So what does this mean for advertisers? A typical television advertisement consists of a series of attention-grabbing images interspersed with the product. But unless the scenes in the advertisement are cut to take account of attentional blink, the brain is likely to ignore the information the advertiser wants to get across. The same applies to magazine advertisements, where viewers often register the main image but fail to pick up on the secondary images—the bits advertisers often desperately want us to see. Raymond says advertisers consistently fail to consider how easily the brain misses the point. It’s not that they haven’t realized that the space and time they have to get their message across has shrunk. But advertisers respond by cramming in ever more complex information. Raymond is opposed to this and her advice is simple: deliver your message in a straightforward manner and do so slowly, gently and concisely.
After her research on the attentional blink, she wondered whether attention would be linked to other processes in the brain, particularly emotion. Could our attentional state influence whether we like or dislike a brand, for example? Today, companies are hugely interested in the emotional value of their brand as they want their products to make us feel good. It is well known that if something elicits positive emotions then you are more likely to take notice of it. But Raymond’s further research also demonstrated that if people are distracted by an image or a brand when performing an intellectually demanding task they tend to instantly dislike the brand, regardless of its emotional value. So for example, if you are reading a web page when a banner advertisement starts flashing or are watching a film with intrusive product placement, it is probable you will come to dislike the brand whatever it is.
This contradicts the more-exposure-the-better rule most of the industry follows, says Raymond and means that advertising can backfire horribly. Advertisers tend to buy as much exposure for a product as they can, through television and radio commercials, billboards, whatever they think will attract their target audience, but again Raymond has found that this doesn’t necessarily work in their favour. Raymond, the most dangerous time, says Raymond, is the holiday season when advertisers are madly competing to grab people’s attention. ‘Marketers don’t realize that humans digest information like they do food. Once they are full, if they are shown any more food, they’re disgusted,’ she says.
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Growing more for less
Satellite technology is helping farmers boost crop yields
A.
For farmers, working out the optimal amount of seed, fertiliser, pesticide and water to scatter on a field can be a matter of luck, despite several harvests. Regular laboratory analyses of soil and plant samples from various sections of a field can help — but such expertise is costly, and often unavailable. However, a new and cheaper method of doing this analysis is now on offer. Precise prescriptions for growing crops can be obtained quickly, and less expensively, by calculating the amount of electromagnetic radiation reflected from agricultural land. The data is collected by orbiting satellites.
B.
Examining the wavelength of radiation that is reflected can reveal, with surprising precision, the properties of the soil, the quality of crop being grown, and the levels in those crops of chlorophyll, various minerals, moisture and other indicators of their quality. If recent and forecast weather data is added, detailed maps can be produced indicating exactly where, and when crops should be grown. The service usually costs less than US $15 per hectare for a handful of readings a year, and can increase yields by as much as 10%.
C.
Such precision farming using satellite-based intelligence is a relatively new technique. Even so, it is catching on quickly. Five years ago, for example, a French cereal-growers’ co-operative called Sevepi purchased a satellite and makes it available to its members in the form of maps of their fields, divided into three or four colour-codes zones per hectare. For each zone, the exact and most fertiliser formula is recommended. On top of this, if the amount of rain in the field has already grown quite high early in the season, and heavy showers are expected, an appropriate dose of growth regulator is recommended for each zone (as fragile stems break more easily in downpours). Then, farm vehicles equipped with global-positioning systems automatically mix and apply the fertiliser doses to each area.
D.
France is the pioneer in this sort of surveillance. More farmland is analysed by satellite there than in any other country, according to Infoterra (a subsidiary of EADS Astrium), the firm that is France’s largest provider of such information, supplying data to companies such as Sevepi. Moreover, Henri Douché, head of Infoterra’s agriculture sales in Toulouse, reckons the amount of monitored farmland will increase, as weather patterns change and farmers can no longer rely on the past as a guide to the future. When yield is confounded by the yield variations that these new weather patterns will bring, even farmers who are afraid of new technology will sign up, he says.
E.
Inexpensive data on the productivity of land is advantageous to governments too. Areas where fertilisers and pesticides are being applied excessively can be pinpointed, enabling a reduction in environmental and land-use damage. Says Guy Lalonde, an agronomist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a government agency, says the satellite data it purchases is proving useful for the study of fields with declining productivity in the province of Saskatchewan. Over-application of nitrogen fertilisers (which are also a source of greenhouse gases) appears partly responsible. And according to RapidEye, a German satellite operator, some companies are also studying satellite data with a view to selling insurance policies to governments of famine-prone countries that might be threatened by crop failure.
F.
In March, RapidEye began selling data that helps forecast harvests. “Too often, farmers limit productivity by managing fields wrongly,” says Fredrick Jung-Rothenhäuser, head of product development at the firm’s headquarters in Brandenburg an der Havel. “Our satellites are the first commercial satellites to include the Red-Edge band of the light spectrum, which is sensitive to changes in chlorophyll content. More research will be necessary to realise the full benefits of the Red-Edge band. However, this band can assist in monitoring vegetation health, improving species separation and also help in measuring protein and nitrogen content in biomass.” The company’s data, which comes from both Europe and the Americas, breaks field productivity down into patches just five metres square.
G.
The advantages that satellite technology provides in terms of precision farming do not have to be restricted to rich countries. In Africa, where many areas have been badly depleted of nutrients, better fertiliser management would help reverse the situation. As a consequence, the charitable trust World Agroforestry Centre, in the city of Nairobi, in Kenya, has begun to build up a collection of radiation patterns derived from around 100,000 samples of African soils. The aim of this work is to help by understanding the potential of these soils to be more agriculturally productive. Once passed on to the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, based in Colombia, South America, it is intended that the information be used to build a database called the ‘Digital Soil Map’. When complete, this will provide farmers with free forecasts, developed with regularly updated satellite imagery, across farmland in the poorest countries in Africa. This information will almost certainly assist in improving crop yields. For a hunger-ravaged continent, that is good news indeed.
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The fluoridation controversy
The long-standing debate about whether to fluoridate our drinking water continues. Fluoridation is the addition of fluoride to public water supplies with the aim of reducing tooth decay. The fluoride, when mixed with water, becomes fluoride and the desired concentration of fluoride in public water is approximately one part per million, depending on the regional temperature and hence the amount of water people are likely to drink. Many studies, such as those by McClure in 1970 through to Burt in 1983, have shown that when children drink fluoridated water, their average rate of tooth decay seems greatly reduced. A typical figure claimed is 50 percent reduction, this apparently enormous benefit for children’s teeth is the major argument in favor of fluoridation.
Three main grounds for opposition to fluoridation have been expressed. First, opponents claim the benefits are exaggerated or not established. Second, there are claims of health risks to parts of the population, for example, allergic reactions. It is also accepted that high levels of fluoride can cause discoloration of otherwise healthy teeth. Proponents do not consider this to be a problem in small concentrations, whereas opponents disagree – especially because some people drink more water and obtain much more than the standard 1 milligram of fluoride per day. Third, fluoridation is thought to be an infringement on individual rights because it is compulsory medication of all members of a community.
An understanding of the fluoridation issue has important implications. If, according to the experts, fluoridation is unquestionably a beneficial and non-hazardous measure, then the wisdom of allowing the public to vote on, and reject it must be questioned.
Almost all studies that have been done have assumed that the scientific aspects of the controversy are unproblematic, and they have excluded science from sociological examination. The traditional view is that science is a special kind of knowledge, which is established through scientific methods and objectively applied by members of a scientific community. However, in recent years there has been a major challenge to this picture by a sociology of science that shows how scientific knowledge is socially negotiated, and inevitably linked to the values of the relevant parties, both scientists and non-scientists. These challenges do not see scientific knowledge as exempt from social inquiry.
Kuhn (1970) argued that scientific knowledge does not always develop in an orderly process, but is characterized by periodic revolutions, in which the methods of study and the assessment criteria change in a fragmented way. According to Kuhn, the shift from one scientific way of thinking to another is not made solely on the basis of clear rules of formal scientific practice, but can include social factors, though Kuhn has never developed a full analysis of what these might be. Collins (1975) took this concept further when he asserted that the outcome of experiments was not something whose meaning could be immediately comprehended, but rather something for interpretation, discussion between scientists, and reinterpretation in the light of other experiments.
One interpretation of this analysis of science is that traditional distinctions between facts and theories, and between scientific knowledge and values, can no longer be justified. Because social processes are involved at all stages of the creation, evaluation, and establishing of scientific knowledge, social values may also be involved.
In the same way as many scientists who study fluoridation have overlooked social values, sociologists have also downplayed an important part of the debate by ignoring the number of eminent scientists who have questioned aspects of fluoridation. An example is the study by Sutton in 1960, which analyzed the classic North American studies of the effect of fluoridation on tooth decay, and found that each showed significant methodological shortcomings. Sutton’s detailed study throws doubt as to the extent of reductions in tooth decay from fluoridation. Yet Sutton’s book is not cited in a single analysis of the fluoridation issue by any sociologist. In a situation of some scientific uncertainty, differences in values are highlighted. A supporter of fluoridation might argue, “The evidence for the benefits of fluoridation is quite substantial, while the evidence for harm is limited and dubious. I think the likely benefits outweigh the possible dangers; hence I support fluoridation because it is the cheapest and easiest way to make sure every child reaps the benefits.” An opponent might argue, “Though the evidence for the benefits of fluoridation is substantial, there is some doubt about it. Since fluoridation is not necessary for good teeth, we should forego the benefits if there is some slight chance of harm. Some scientists claim that a small percentage of the population could be harmed by fluoride. Therefore I oppose fluoridation of water supplies and favor the voluntary use of fluoride tablets by those who want to take them.”
Both arguments consider the scientific evidence concerning fluoridation, but differ in their assessments of the social benefits and costs. This difference is not between rationality and irrationality but is a legitimate difference in values, for example, the positive value placed on good teeth, the negative value placed on possible health risks, and the social benefits or costs of compulsory or voluntary intake of fluoride.
From the sociological point of view, opposition to fluoridation is not necessarily irrational. Rather, claims to rationality and to scientific authority are better seen as part of a strategy to promote fluoridation than as incontrovertible statements of fact. Second, social values are likely to be bound up in any decision about fluoridation, so this is not an issue on which declarations by scientific experts ought to be considered the final word.
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