202602.01
Is "Overpacking" Disaster Education Counterproductive? Neuroscientific Assessment of Combining Tsunami Mechanisms and Evacuation Instructions (Publication)
Posted in RESEARCH
Does conveying both the mechanism of a tsunami (the "why") and evacuation instructions (the "what to do") actually enhance the effectiveness of disaster education? While previous research has shown that these types of information are effective individually, the impact of combining them—specifically how the brain's internal processing leads to evacuation intent—had not yet been verified.
In this study, an experiment was conducted with Japanese university students divided into four groups: those shown an explanation of tsunami mechanisms, those shown evacuation instructions, those shown a combination of both, and a control group. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity during video viewing and assessing changes in evacuation intent before and after, the results revealed that while each type of information is effective on its own, combining them increases cognitive load. This combination was found to suppress activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)—a region involved in self-referential processing (internalizing information as relevant to oneself)—potentially undermining the overall educational impact.
This significant research provides neuroscientific evidence for the necessity of optimizing the balance between information richness and cognitive processing capacity in disaster education. The findings were published in the Journal of Disaster Research.
Neural Evaluation of Educational Videos: Potential Disadvantage of Combining Hazard-Mechanism Explanation and Evacuation Instruction Messages
Yuang Chen, Kei Takahashi, Azumi Tanabe-Ishibashi, Naoki Miura, Motoaki Sugiura Journal of Disaster Research, 2026 https://doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2026.p0033
Does conveying both the mechanism of a tsunami (the "why") and evacuation instructions (the "what to do") actually enhance the effectiveness of disaster education? While previous research has shown that these types of information are effective individually, the impact of combining them—specifically how the brain's internal processing leads to evacuation intent—had not yet been verified.
In this study, an experiment was conducted with Japanese university students divided into four groups: those shown an explanation of tsunami mechanisms, those shown evacuation instructions, those shown a combination of both, and a control group. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity during video viewing and assessing changes in evacuation intent before and after, the results revealed that while each type of information is effective on its own, combining them increases cognitive load. This combination was found to suppress activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)—a region involved in self-referential processing (internalizing information as relevant to oneself)—potentially undermining the overall educational impact.
This significant research provides neuroscientific evidence for the necessity of optimizing the balance between information richness and cognitive processing capacity in disaster education. The findings were published in the Journal of Disaster Research.
Neural Evaluation of Educational Videos: Potential Disadvantage of Combining Hazard-Mechanism Explanation and Evacuation Instruction Messages
Yuang Chen, Kei Takahashi, Azumi Tanabe-Ishibashi, Naoki Miura, Motoaki Sugiura
Journal of Disaster Research, 2026 https://doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2026.p0033