An Initial Evaluation of the Use of Captioned Television to Improve the Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension of Navy Sailors

Abstract

The Navy is interested in finding low-cost, low intervention, methods of improving the reading skills of sailors. Enlisted sailors from the USS LEXINGTON participated in a series of thirty-six captioned TV sessions between February 11 and April 19, 1991. The captioned TV sessions consisted of viewing and reading the audio portion of a regularly televised TV program. The session procedure consisted of turning on the television program and, after a few seconds, turning down the volume so it was inaudible. This procedure encouraged subjects to read the visual presentation of the normally audible soundtrack. All subjects were volunteers.

On-screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool

“…Only one task could be done efficiently at a time leaving children with fewer cognitive resources available to process the meaning of the text both at a literal and an inferential level. Evidence that comprehension improves in the presence of closed captions exists for children who are proficient readers (Griffin & Dumestre, 1993). The research evidence suggests that children who view educational television without captions will outperform their caption-viewing peers on comprehension tasks.…”

Video Captions Benefit Everyone

“…Children who watch captioned videos are better able to define content words that were heard in the videos, pronounce novel words, recognize vocabulary items (which may or may not have been heard in the videos), and draw inferences about what happened in the videos. Other studies demonstrate cumulative benefits from watching videos with captions, for example, cumulative growth in vocabulary both for hearing children (Koskinen et al, 1986) and for hearing adults (Griffin & Dumestre, 1992–1993). …”

“…More than 100 empirical studies, listed in the appendix, document the benefits of captions. These studies report benefits to a wide swath of participants as measured by a wide swath of criteria: summarizing main ideas (Markham, 2000-2001), recalling facts (Brasel & Gips, 2014), drawing inferences (Linebarger et al, 2010), defining words (Griffin & Dumestre, 1992-1993), identifying emotions (Murphy-Berman & Whobrey, 1983), and of course, answering multiple-choice comprehension questions (Hinkin, Harris, & Miranda, 2014; Markham & Peter, 2002-2003; Murphy-Berman & Jorgensen, 1980).…”

Learning to read from television: The effects of using captions and narration.

“…The same power to process more deeply could be expected from captions once the child has reached automated reading. As children become proficient readers, researchers have provided evidence that comprehension improves in the presence of closed captions (Griffin & Dumestre, 1993).…”