An eye-tracking study on the influence of number of lines and subtitle speed in the processing of Brazilian deaf and hearing participants

Exploratory pieces of research in Brazil have demonstrated that the SDH available in the country does not align with people’s demands, questioning the parameters currently used. In this sense, experimental pieces of research based on eye-tracking have gained status in the study of subtitling parameters in recent years. Two of these parameters (subtitle speed and number of lines) still lack further investigation, even though they have been approached by previous studies. The number of lines and its influence on the processing of subtitles by the Deaf, especially, is something that has not yet been tested extensively; however, most of the studies carried out with hearing participants point out that the processing of 2-line subtitles is less demanding given their more complete syntax. In this context, this paper aimed at investigating how the subtitle speed and the number of lines influence the processing of subtitles by deaf and hearing participants. For that, we selected 8 extracts (with between an 8 to 15 seconds duration) from a movie whose subtitles were manipulated in line with 4 experimental conditions: 1 line, 2 lines, slow (145 wpm or 14 cps) and fast (180 wpm or 17 cps) subtitles in a 2 x 2 factorial design. The participants (16 hearing so far, who will be complemented by 16 deaf in the future) were exposed to these videos on an eye-tracking device. So far, the results of the hearing participants’ fixation duration suggest a significant statistical difference on the number of lines variable. They had less difficulty processing when the subtitles had a more complete syntax, in this case, 2-line subtitles. Subtitle speed was not significant.