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A number of other studies investigated the question of whether the simultaneous presentation of three symbol
systems would impede or facilitate language learning. The subjects in most of these studies were second
language learners. The media under investigation in this research was captioned or subtitled video. Again a
primary question was whether the addition of another channel of information requiring the decoding of yet
another symbol system would result in cognitive overload for students who are already engaged in a mentally
taxing process.
Studies which looked at the effects of captioning on language learning (Borras, I. 1994, Garza, T., 1991,
Koskinen, P. & Newman, S., 1991, Bean, R. M. & Wilson, R. M., 1989, Markham, P., 1989, Vanderplank,
R., 1988, ) used designs which compared groups who were tested on materials which were presented using
either print, video, or video with captions. The design of the study reported by Garza (1991) is in many ways
typical of this literature. In this analysis fourty students of Russian as a Foreign Language and seventy students
of English as a Second Language participated in an experimental study to assess the effects of captioned video
on language learning. Half the students of Russian watched videos with captions and half watched videos
without captions. The students of English underwent the same treatments. On tests of language
comprehension the groups that saw captioned video demonstrated a mean gain of 75.2 percent of correct
answers, a mean decrease of 61.16 percent of incorrect answers and a mean decrease of 83.76 percent in
unanswered questions relative to groups who saw the same video without captions.
While the gain scores reported by Garza are atypically high, in none of the studies did the presence of captions
result in lower scores on tests of comprehension. In the other studies in which the subjects were second
language learners, (Borras, I., 1994, Koskinen, P. & Newman, S., 1991, Markham, P., 1989) the presence of a
captions improved comprehension relative to the other treatments. It would appear from these reports that the
addition of a more stable sysmbol system, text, to a transient medium, video, results in increased
meaningfulness of the language. Garza (1991) concluded that the captions provide a bridge between the
student's strong reading ability and weaker listening skills (p. 259).
It should probably not be surprising that even second language learners are able to attend to multiple symbol
systems simultaneously when we consider the results of Pezdek and Hartman (1984). In this study sixty fiveyear-old
children watched a videotape in one of three conditions, A) with toys available to play with, B) with a
record playing, C) with no such distractors. The dependent measures were percent of time that subject attended
to the televison and recall accuracy on comprehension questions of the material viewed. Although attention to
the televison varied by treatment, recall comprehension was not significantly different across treatment groups
(p. 216) . Even five-year-old children were able to effectively distribute their attention such that they could
process auditory and visual information while performing other tasks. The authors conclude that children learn
a sophisticated cognitive processing strategy for television viewing at a very young age. It appears that second
language learners are equally prepared for the task of processing multiple channels of information.
In two of the studies of captioning (Bean, 1989, Reese, 1983) the presence of captioning did not result in
favorable effects on the learning. In both of these studies, subjects were using their native language. In the
Bean article, subjects were adults learning to read. The author used captioning to determine whether subjects
could spontaneously learn new vocabulary. Subjects were assigned to one of three conditions: 1) Closed
captioned with instruction (n=9), 2) Closed caption without instruction (n=7), 3) Script with instruction (n=8).
Instruction entailed discussing essential vocabulary with the students before presenting the material. Two
weaknesses seem evident in this study: 1)The sample size is too small and 2)the expectation that students who
cannot read will learn vocabulary spontaneously is too large. It appears that for those who have not adequately
learned the skill of decoding letters to form words captioned video is not immediately beneficial.
In Reese (1983) subjects were assigned to one of four conditions in which news stories were presented either in
their original form, or with the addition of subtitles. In two conditions the audio and video were mismatched.
The resulting groups were. 1)Audio and video match, no captions, 2)Audio and video mismatch, no captions,
3)Audio and video match, captions present, 4)Audio and video mismatch, captions present. Subjects were told
to evaluate the programs on a number of criteria including interest, clarity, accuracy, etc. The subjects were not
told that they would be tested or that they should try to recall as much information as possible. In analyzing
data the author noted that subjects reacted negatively to the "captions for the hearing impaired (p14)." These
results seem to suggest that captions were viewed not as a potential aid to recall, (the subjects were unaware of
their purpose in viewing), but as a compensatory meant for others. Kozma suggests that, "the perceptions
students have about a medium and the purpose they have for viewing influence the amount of effort they put
into the processing of the message and consequently, the depth of their understanding of the story (p. 13)." In
Reese's study it appears that the students were misinformed about their purpose and had negative perceptions