David Llanos
Department of Political Science

Druckam (2003) argued that TV images affect the overall evaluation of candidates and the less politically sophisticated individuals learn more from watching a debate in TV than listening it on radio. Based on the results of three pre tests among 600 undergrad students, we found that both processes may be affected by an underlying individual’s predisposition for processing visual or auditory stimuli reflected in a wide variety of activities. The adequate way of testing these preliminary findings is through a carefully planned experimental setting to compare results with the results obtained by the Druckman’s (2003) experiment as a benchmark. The proposed experimental design will: 1) survey all participants to identify all the standard demographic characteristics 2)survey all participants to identify their predispositions in processing different types of stimuli (auditory, visual, or kinesthetic) in a wide variety of activities 3) randomly exposed participants to three different treatments: a) Listen the first debate between Kennedy and Nixon an audio version b) watch a video of the debate with captions and no audio or read a newspaper with the script of the debate and some and c) watch a video of the debate with the original audio, and 4)Measure political knowledge and the evaluation of candidates.