Cognitive Processes in Audience Decision Making 111they perceive the “l” sound. By the time they perceive the “f ” sound, there is only one word left
on their list of possible words.^60 In addition, contextual cues from the activated schema and from
the current sentence being spoken can also constrain the number of words the listener activates.^61
Once listeners recognize the word, for 200 to 400 milliseconds they activate all possible mean-ings of the word, even those meanings that do not fi t into the context of the sentence.^62 Although
listeners typically recognize the words in clearly spoken sentences, they either fail to recognize the
words in unclear speech or initially misrecognize them and then correctly recognize them as more
context is provided.^63
Viewers’ Perception of Images and Graphs
Many people imagine viewers perceive pictures all at once or holistically. However, research shows
that audiences perceive images in much the same way they read text—by fi xating on one visual
feature then jumping to another part of the picture and fi xating on it. Each fi xation during image
viewing averages about 300 milliseconds, but the duration of individual fi xations can vary widely.
The pattern of viewers’ fi xations and saccades is not random. For example, when viewers look at
images of faces, they primarily fi xate on the eyes, the mouth, and general shape of the face—the
features most critical to face recognition (see Figure 3.7 ).^64
Brain Regions Activated. Different regions of the brain are activated depending on what theviewer is perceiving. For example, object recognition takes place in the visual cortex located in
the occipital lobe of both hemispheres (see Figure 3.4 , p. 108). Scene perception takes place in
the parahippocampal place area located inside the middle region of the temporal lobe beneath the
hippocampus (see Figure 3.5 , p. 108).^65 Face recognition activates the fusiform face area located in
the lower temporal and occipital lobes of both hemispheres.^66 Disorders associated with these three
regions include visual agnosia, topographical disorientation, Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia.
The longer viewers are exposed to images, the more accurately they recognize and recall theimages they have seen. For example, magazine readers were able to recognize only 50% of the
illustrations in a magazine when the illustrations were presented at a 500-millisecond exposure
FIGURE 3.7 A Viewer’s Eye-Fixation Pattern Looking at a Photograph
Source: Yarbus (1967, p. 179)