Table Of ContentAN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT
"HUMAN INTEREST" FACTORS ON LISTENABILITY
A D issertation
Presented to
the Faculty of the Graduate School
The University of Southern C alifornia
In P artial Fulfillm ent
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Francis Arthur C artierf Jr*
June 1951
UMI Number: DP31977
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This dissertation, written by
..................FRANCIS, A_.„CARTIERa_ JR.........................
under the guidance of Faculty Committee
on Studies, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Council
on Graduate Study and Research, in partial ful
fillment of requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
..........
Committee on Studies
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTRODUCTION ........................................................................ 1
II REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM...........................................................12
Statement of the problem ...........................................31
III TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES................................... . 33
Preparation of m a te ria ls ........................................34
The s u b je c ts .................................................................. 49
The testing p ro c e d u re .............................................57
Analysis of te st scores . . . . . . . . . 59
IV PRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA . 62
V SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS . . . . 7$
Sum m ary...........................................................................7$
C o n clu sio n s...................................................................£2
Im p licatio n s........................................... &3
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................ . . 97
APPENDIX A ...........................................................................................102
APPENDIX B ...........................................................................................117
APPENDIX C ...........................................................................................132
APPENDIX D ...........................................................................................147
APPENDIX E .............................. 150
APPENDIX F ...........................................................................................171
APPENDIX G ...........................................................................................173
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
I Pattern of "Reading Ease" S c o re s................................. 21
II Pattern of "Human Interest" S c o re s.............................22
III S tatistical C haracteristics of the Stories . . 36
IV Judges’ Ratings of the R eaders.....................................44
V Composition of the Test Tapes
D isposition of HI 15, 30 and 50 Versions ♦ • 4&
VI D istribution of Sex and Age Among
the S u b je c ts.......................................................................50
VII Some C haracteristics of the Situation
During the T e s ts .............................................................. 51
VIII Comparison of Mean Intelligence Quotient
Among Groups of S u b je c ts....................................... 53
IX Comparison of Reading Comprehension Grade
Placement Among Groups of Students .................. 54
X Means Comprehension and C ritical Ratios
Between T a p e s ...................................................................56
XI Correction for Chance Success on M ultiple-
Choice T e s t .......................................................................60
✓
XII Comparison of Comprehension Scores
Grouped by H I .................................................................. 63
iv
TABLE PAGE
XIII Mean Corrected Comprehension Score and
Standard Error of the Mean for Each
S to ry .............................................................................. 64
XIV Differences and C ritical Ratios Among the
Three Versions of Each S t o r y ................................65
XV Number of Subjects Attaining Scores
Above and Below 7 * 0 0 .................................................66
XVI Chi Square for D istribution of Subjects
Attaining Scores Above and Below 7*00s . • • 66
XVII Number of Subjects Attaining Scores ,
Above and Below 4 * 0 0 .................................................69
XVIII Chi Square for D istribution of Subjects
A ttaining Scores Above and Below 4*00 . . . 69
XIX Male-Female Performance Differences
1. G en eral.......................................................................70
XX Male-Female Performance Differences
2. Between Average Means for HI 15
Versions and HI 50 V ersio n s....................................71
XXI Comparison of Means of Tests Grouped as
"Easy", "Medium", and " D iffic u lt" .......................73
XXII Comprehension Score Q u a rtile s.....................................75
AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT
OF "HUMAN INTEREST" FACTORS ON LISTENABILITY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
As a subject of inquiry, liste n a b ility may be de
fined as th at area of the field s of speech and psychology
which is interested in the com prehensibility of informa
tional speech* I t is concerned with methods of speaking
in such a way as to insure the maximum possible compre
hension from an audience, whether the audience be one per
son or a vast number. I t is therefore also concerned with
predicting the extent to which a given sample of informa
tiv e speech w ill be comprehended by a given audience,
whether th at audience is a specialized one, lik e college
students or c iv il engineers, or a more general one, lik e an
average radio audience or a business convention. It is not
concerned d irectly with persuasion, which is in the domain
of rh eto ric, with drama or interp retatio n, which are in the
domain of the speech a rts, or with in tellig ib ility ,^ - which
1 In te llig ib ility is here taken to mean the recog-
n izab ility of speech, i.e ., its articulation score as
measured by the number of words in a lis t th at the listen er
can repeat. I t is what is commonly under discussion when a
layman asks, "Can you hear me?11, and when a radio amateur
or airplane radio operator asks, "Can you read me?" In tel
lig ib ility is not concerned with whether or not the ideas
a speaker is trying to communicate can be grasped by the
liste n e r. For example, if a person were to say, "I get
every word you say, but I donTt understand what you are try
ing to te ll me,” then the speech of the person to whom he
is in the domain of speech science, but i t has application
in a ll these areas*
L istenability is concerned only with the efficiency
of inform ational speech or the inform ational content of
speech even though designed for some purpose other than to
inform* If one method of stating a particular fact or
argument can be shown to be more readily comprehended by
an audience than another method of statem ent, then the
former is considered to be the more efficien t from a listens
ing com prehensibility point of view, i*e*, to have higher
or b etter liste n a b ility » to be more listenable ♦
L istenability is a concept and as a fie ld of re
search is closely allied to readability * Readability is
the field devoted to the development of efficient styles
of w riting for books and newspapers and other m aterial de
signed to be silen tly read by specific or general audiences*
E fficient in th is case means easily comprehended when read.
A given style is said to be efficien t, either in
readability or liste n a b ility , when the larg est number of
1 (Continued)
has been listening has had in te llig ib ility but not liste n
ab ility .
A less ambiguous term for th is concept is
recognizability ♦
subjects in the audience concerned comprehends the larg est
percentage of the m aterial* I t is normally found th at some
subjects comprehend a comparatively large percentage of the
m aterial, more subjects comprehend, say, h alf of i t , and a
small percentage understand very little * Relative e ffi
ciency may be detem ined by comparison of mean comprehen
sion by the same or comparable audiences of different
samples of w ritten or spoken language* Since l i tt l e re
search has been done on the efficiency of speech in the
face-to-face situ atio n , liste n a b ility is used in th is
paper to refer only to the efficiency of the audible
aspects of language, i*e*, what is heard from an unseen
speaker, as on the radio*
The need for research in liste n a b ility has been
indicated, for example, by P* E* Vernon, who found that
about half of B ritain ’s radio liste n ers seemed to compre
hend and retain p ractically nothing from the average in -
2
formational broadcast* He further found that many of the
liste n ers who rated a program as being tfraost in terestin g ”
^ p* E. Vernon, ”Investigations of the In te lli
g ib ility of Educational B roadcasts,” paper read before the
B ritish Association for the Advancement of Science,
September 5> 1950* ,
