Do Adolescents Attend to Warnings in Cigarette Advertising? An Eye-Tracking Approach

Currently mandated and new health warnings in the context of magazine ads for two cigarettes were studied among adolescents. Focus groups were used to garner a basic understanding of how adolescents react to cigarette advertising and currently mandated Surgeon General Warnings, and to develop new warnings. Two currently mandated warnings and two new warnings were then imbedded in magazine ads for two cigarette brands and presented to 326 adolescents. Subjects viewed each ad as long as desired while state-of-the-art eye-tracking equipment recorded point of gaze, fixation, and saccades. Following presentation of the ads and eye-tracking measurement, subjects completed a masked recall task. Analyses addressed the number of subjects who noticed the warning, their time to first fixation within the warning, and the time spent fixating on the warning. The masked recall measure permitted examination of the possible link of eye-tracking measures with cognitive processing of a warning.Results indicated that within the competitive reading environment of a cigarette ad, new warnings attract greater readership, with quicker attention to warnings than mandated warnings. New warnings were noticed in 1 to 2Vi seconds less time. Total attention devoted to all warnings ranged from 2 to 3 seconds. Eye-tracking measures were significantly related to masked recall of warning content.