The Impact of Captions On Hearing-Impaired Children's Affective Reactions To Television

Abstract

An assessment was made of the impact of captions on hearing-impaired students' affective reactions to a version of a popular children's television program, Shazam. Forty-two hearing-impaired children ranging in age from 8 to 12 years old were randomly divided into 2 groups; 1 group viewed the program without captions and the other viewed it with captions at a very simple language level. During and following the presentation the children rated their perception of the characters' emotions and personality traits. They also indicated their liking of various program scenes, and gave their predictions concerning how characters would behave in new but similar situations. Results indicated that captions seemed to enhance hearing-impaired children's abilities to perceive the emotional complexity of presented information. The implications are discussed in the following review.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bandura, A. , Ross, D. , & Ross, S.A. A comparative test of the status envy, social power, and secondary reinforcement theories of identificatory learning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1963, 67(a), 527-534.

Bandura, A. , Ross, D. , & Ross, S.A. Vicarious reinforcement and imitative learning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1963, 67(b), 601-607.

Boyd, J. , & Vader, E. Captioned television for the deaf. American Annals of the Deaf, 1972, 117, 34-37.

Earley, S. Open captioning for children. In M. Harmony (Ed.), Promise and performance: ACT's guide to TV Programming for Children. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1977.

Leifer, A.D. & Roberts, D.F. Children's responses to television violence. In J. P Murray , E. A. Rubinstein , & G. A. Comstock (Eds.), Television and social behavior (Vol. 2). Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972.

Leifer, A.D. Television and the development of social behavior. In K. Riegel & J. Meacham (Eds.), The developing individual in a changing world, Volume II: Social and environmental issues. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton & Co., 1976.

Loevinger, J. , & Wessler, R. Measuring ego development (Vol. 1). San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 1970.

Mauer, R.A. Young children's responses to a physically disabled story book hero . Exceptional Children, 1979, 45, 326-330.

Murphy-Berman, V. , & Jorgensen, J. Evaluation of a multi-level linguistic approach to captioning television for hearing impaired children. American Annals of the Deaf , 1980, 125, 1072-1082.

10.

Shulman, J. , & Wilson, K. A multi-level linguistic approach to captioning television for hearing impaired children. Research proposal, 1977. (Senior author affiliated with WGBH-TV, Boston)

11.

Nix, G. The effects of synchronized captioning on the assimilation of vocabulary and concepts presented in a film of intermediate level deaf children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon, 1971.

12.

Davila, R. Effect of changes in visual information patterns on students achievement, using a captioned film and special adapted still pictures. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 1972.

13.

Flagg, B. Perception and comprehension of captioned television: A pilot study . Unpublished manuscript, 1980. (Author affiliated with the Harvard Graduate School of Education)