The Effects of Caption Rate and Language Level on Comprehension of a Captioned Video Presentation

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.