AUTHOR=Schwab Frank , Hennighausen Christine , Adler Dorothea C. , Carolus Astrid 

TITLE=Television Is Still “Easy” and Print Is Still “Tough”? More Than 30 Years of Research on the Amount of Invested Mental Effort

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2018

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01098

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01098

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>We provide a literature overview of 30 years of research on the amount of invested mental effort (AIME, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B75">Salomon, 1984</xref>), illuminating relevant literature in this field. Since the introduction of AIME, this concept appears to have vanished. To obtain a clearer picture of where the theory of AIME has diffused, we conducted a literature search focusing on the period 1985–2015. We examined scientific articles (<italic>N</italic> = 244) that cite <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B75">Salomon (1984)</xref> and content-analyzed their keywords. Based on these keywords, we identified seven content clusters: <italic>affect and motivation</italic>, <italic>application fields</italic>, <italic>cognition and learning</italic>, <italic>education and teaching</italic>, <italic>media technology, learning with media technology</italic>, and <italic>methods</italic>. We present selected works of each content cluster and describe in which research field the articles had been published. Results indicate that AIME was most commonly (but not exclusively) referred to in the area of educational psychology indicating its importance regarding learning and education, thereby investigating print and TV, as well as new media. From a methodological perspective, research applied various research methods (e.g., longitudinal studies, experimental designs, theoretical analysis) and samples (e.g., children, college students, low income families). From these findings, the importance of AIME for further research is discussed.</p>