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Eye movement of six subjects was recorded as they watched video segments with and without captions. It was found that the addition of captions to a video resulted in major changes in eye movement patterns, with the viewing process becoming primarily a reading process. Further, although people viewing a specific video segment are likely to have similar eye movement patterns, there are also distinct individual differences present in these patterns. For example, someone accustomed to speechreading may spend more time looking at an actor's lips, while someone with poor English skills may spend more time reading the captions. Finally, there is some preliminary evidence to suggest that higher captioning speed results in more time spent reading captions on a video segment.
The information presented in the present study represents the initial data from a government-funded research project (U.S. Department of Education Grant H026R70003), "A Study of the Eye Movement Strategies Used in Viewing Captioned Television," undertaken at the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training (IDRT). This project represents the first attempt in more than 20 years to examine how people move their eyes when they watch captioned television programs.
Captions are subtitles that display spoken dialogue in printed form, usually on the bottom of the screen. There is a considerable body of literature related to captioned television stretching back to the 1970s. Recent studies include Jensema (1998), Jensema, McCann, and Ramsey (1996), Kirkland (1999), and Loeterman and Kelly (1997). Unfortunately, almost none of this literature relates to how people actually see captions. In the mid1970s, some attempts were made to measure the eye movement of caption viewers when the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was developing the technology for a national closed-captioned television system. This research was done about 1974 by Kenneth G. O'Bryan of the Ontario Educational Communication Authority for the WGBH Caption Center in Boston and resulted in two apparently unpublished manuscripts, Eye Movement Research Report on Captioning Television Programs for the Deaf and Report on Basic Findings on Captioned News. (Mardi Loeterman found these manuscripts in July 1999 in the WGBH archives.) A literature search has turned up no other subsequent research articles on eye movement and captioning.
Over the last 20 years, closed captioning has evolved from a PBS engineering development project...