About the Facility

Located on the University Park campus at Penn State, the Media Effects Research Laboratory consists of two main wings: 1) The Traditional Media Wing examining the effects of radio, news, television, and film entertainment, and 2) The New Media Wing to examine the effects of new media and communications technology.

The Traditional Media Wing

The Traditional Media Wing has two main rooms - the Experimental Room and the Observation Room - as well as a reception area and a restroom. The wing currently features four key audio-visual presentation systems, including a laser disc player, VCR, DVD player, cable television, and computers. The units are routed through a projection system onto a nine-foot screen that is the primary display unit. A 27-inch television monitor serves as a secondary display unit. The display units are supported by a surround-sound speaker system comprising eight speaker boxes. Presentation units are located in the Observation Room and display units are located in the Experimental Room.

How the Traditional Media Wing is Utilized

In a typical experiment, the participant sits in the Experimental Room and views stimuli on one or both the display units while the experimenter monitors the controls and observes the participant's reactions through a one-way mirror from the Observation Room. In addition to visual observation, the experimenter has access to other observation systems, including online psychophysiological measures that tap into cardiac, brain, muscular, and ocular activities of participants. Currently, the Experimental Room can seat four - six participants and the Observation Room can accommodate at least two observers.

The New Media Wing

This newest wing of the lab is home to 18 computers. Each computer is equipped with cd-rom, zip, and 3 1/2 external floppy disk drives. Computers are equipped with reaction time software and Internet Explorer, among others. As with the traditional media lab, experimenters can observe psychophysiological measures that tap into cardiac, brain, muscular, and ocular activities of participants in regards to download speed and orienting response to pop-up ads and other web-based animation. Measures can be observed for a maximum of 8 participants at one time. In addition, experimenters can also examine unconscious or implicit attitudes through the use of reaction time tests. 

How the New Media Wing is Utilized

In a typical experiment, participants access the system as they would in a PSU ITS computer lab. They are exposed to stimuli via the computer screen (headphones are available upon request for audio reception) while the experimenter monitors the controls from another computer.