Publication Title
The effects of caption rate and language level on comprehension of a captioned video presentation
Publication Type
Journal article
Journal
American Annals of the Deaf
Year of publication
1980
Volume
125
Issue
7
Pages
943-948
Language(s)
English
Modalities
Abstract
The purposes of this study were (a) to explore the effect of caption rate on comprehension and (b) to assess the effect of varying caption language level on comprehension. One hundred eighty-seven students, enrolled in three elementary and secondary schools for the deaf, viewed a one-half hour commercial television program captioned at 60, 90, or 120 words per minute and at increasing levels of linguistic complexity. The students were tested on explicit, inferential, and global comprehension items. Caption rate did not appear to affect comprehension. The language level of the captions influenced explicit and inferential comprehension, with subjects performing significantly better with lower, than with higher language level captions. This effect was particularly noticeable with poorer readers. Directions for further captioning research are discussed.