This essay uses the recent victory of an IBM computer (Watson) in the TV game, "Jeopardy," to speculate on the abilities Watson would need, in addition to those it has, to be human. The essay's basic premise is that to be human is to behave as humans behave and to function in society as humans function. Alternatives to this premise are considered…

Television producers, across all types of programming, assume young viewers can parallel process simultaneously presented messages. For instance, television news producers appear to believe that young viewers can attend to weather icons, lexical news crawls, and sports scores while they also attend to news anchors who present the news.…

The scientific study of the visual communication media arts must be based on both general theories regarding these media and specific theories developed for each medium. Although it is possible that the delay in the development of vigorous scientific studies and empirical research findings in the visual communication media of television has caused…

Total comprehension and understanding of visual images (particularly moving images) are the result of a series of complex biological (brain) and mental (mind) processes and activities. Whereas perceptual psychology and neurophysiology are among the two main academic disciplines that explain the functions performed by the organs of visual and…