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... Additionally, the results indicated that eye fixation was prolonged when both the soundtrack and subtitles were in the English language, due to the students' inclination towards comparing the content of the soundtrack with the subtitles. Specker (2008) conducted a qualitative study that focused on the examination of subtitles and their reading process. The study involved the analysis of various cases, with particular attention given to fixation counts and the duration of time allocated to specific words in the subtitles. ...
Background/purpose. The popularity of foreign-language films and shows with subtitles has been driven by their cost-effectiveness in comparison to audio dubbing. The primary objective of this research was to explore the reading and viewing behaviors of proficient learners in the contemporary era, characterized by significant progress in eye-tracking technologies. These advancements have provided researchers with the capability to precisely analyze eye fixation patterns, offering valuable insights into how individuals engage with written and visual content. Materials/methods. The study's focus was on adults between the ages of 20 and 40 years old who watched videos with English language soundtracks and Standard Arabic subtitles, as well as videos with Moroccan Arabic and Standard Arabic soundtracks and subtitles. To assess the impact of different subtitling speeds on reading behavior, participants were exposed to varying speeds. Also, a detailed questionnaire was administered to the participants after the sessions in order to obtain further information and the collected data were then analyzed using descriptive statistics. Practical implications. The findings of this study revealed that doctoral candidates spent less time focusing on the subtitles, and some even completely ignored them. Master's students exhibited similar eye movement patterns to the doctoral candidates, while undergraduates had longer fixation times on the subtitles. Conclusion. This research provides valuable insights into how the speed of subtitles influences viewer behavior and has implications for language learning and the production of audiovisual content. By understanding how different subtitling speeds affect reading behavior, language learners and content creators can make informed decisions to enhance the learning experience and optimize the production of audiovisual materials. Ed-Dali | 8
... Unfortunately, considering the position of the word in the caption is also practically demanding and beyond the scope of this study. In addition, while L2 learners hear the target words all at the same instant relative to the imagery, they differ from each other regarding the time spent reading captions (Specker, 2008). In fact, patterns of shifting between scenes and captions differ not only between but also within learners. ...
... In fact, patterns of shifting between scenes and captions differ not only between but also within learners. To illustrate, it has been shown that viewers altered their reading patterns as they moved through video material and rhythmic captions (Perego et al., 2010;Specker, 2008). This trend, in turn, entails possible changes in attentional processing of written forms, depending on whether the target word occurs at the beginning or the end of the video. ...
The aim of this thesis is to study the role of imagery in L2 captioned video by examining modality (Study 1), contiguity (Study 2), and spacing (Study 3) effects in incidental vocabulary learning from extensive TV viewing. An experimental design was employed in which one hundred seventy-three Algerian EFL learners in their third year of the Linguistics Bachelor programme were randomly assigned to either a Control, View, or Non-View group. Treatment participants watched two full-length seasons of documentary series extending to eight viewing hours, over a six-week period of two-week intervals. The View group watched the episodes in the form of L2 captioned video while the Non-View group had the imagery hidden and were therefore exposed to L2 audio and L2 captions only. Four levels of word knowledge were measured: meaning recall and recognition (posttest only) and spoken and written form recognition (pretest-posttest). Study 1 assessed the effect of obscuring imagery on incidental learning of twenty words using a between-participants design. The results showed successful word learning regardless of the presence of imagery. Study 2 investigated the effect of verbal-visual contiguity (the co-occurrence of a word and its visual referent) on incidental learning of twenty-eight words using a within-participants design (View group only). It introduced contigfrequency, contigduration, and contigratio as three measures of contiguity on two timespans (∓7 seconds and ∓25 seconds) that were longer than those used in previous studies. The results showed that the amount of time visual referents appeared on the screen (contigduration), measured in a ∓25 second timeframe relative to the verbal occurrence, was predictive of learning. These results were more pronounced in the meaning recognition test. Study 3 explored whether words would be learned better when their occurrences were spread across viewing sessions (spaced condition), as compared to appearing within a single session (massed condition) by measuring the incidental learning of eight matched word pairs using a between-items design. It also examined whether learning in these two spacing conditions was influenced by the presence of imagery. The results revealed a positive effect of spaced occurrences in the Non-View group but not the View group, suggesting that a spacing advantage is more likely when fewer cues are available. These results were limited to knowledge of meaning only.
... In the field of AVT, Géry d'Ydewalle and colleagues in Belgium have been involved in psycholinguistic studies on the processing of subtitles using eye tracking since the late 1980s. To date, a number of studies have appeared in which eye movement was analysed in an attempt to understand how subtitles are processed; these include d' Ydewalle and Gielen (1992), d' Ydewalle and De Bruycker (2007), Specker (2008), Perego et al. (2010), Bisson et al. (2012), Ghia (2012), Rajendran et al. (2013), Krejtz et al. (2013), Kruger (2013), Kruger et al. (2013), Winke et al. (2013), and Kruger and Steyn (2014). Some of the most dominant foci in these studies include the difference between the way one and two-line subtitles are read, the attention distribution between the subtitles and the rest of the screen, and the effort involved in reading subtitles (see Kruger andSteyn 2014 andWinke et al. 2013 for an overview of some of these studies). ...
... What was not done satisfactorily in their study was to correlate reading with other measures like performance. Specker (2008) investigated the reading of scrolling or upward-rotating threelined captions that were produced by means of respeaking. She looked at fixation counts and average fixation duration, but also successive fixations, and then inspected fixation plots for individual subtitles, yielding very good qualitative interpretations of the reading of subtitles in thorough multimodal analyses supported by comprehension data. ...
The exponential growth of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) in the last three decades has consolidated its place as an area of study within Translation Studies (TS). However, AVT is still a young domain currently exploring a number of different lines of inquiry without a specific methodological and theoretical framework. This volume discusses the advantages and drawbacks of ten approaches to AVT and highlights the potential avenues opened up by new methods. Our aim is to jumpstart the discussion on the (in)adequacy of the methodologies imported from other disciplines and the need (or not) for a conceptual apparatus and framework of analysis specific to AVT. This collective work relates to recent edited volumes that seek to take stock on research in AVT, but it distinguishes itself from those publications by promoting links in what is now a very fragmented field. Originally published as a special issue of Target 28:2 (2016).
... A fixation occurs when the eye remains relatively still in a predefined area of dispersion over a predefined threshold of time, typically 200-300 milliseconds in reading, scene processing, and object searching tasks (Rayner 1998). (Akahori, Hirai, Kawamura, and Morishima 2016, Bisson, Van Heuven, Conklin, and Tunney 2014, Caffrey 2008a, Caffrey 2009, Caffrey 2012, Cambra, Penacchio, Silvestre, and Leal 2014, D'Ydewalle and De Bruycker 2007, D'Ydewalle, Praet, Verfaillie, and van Rensbergen 1991, D'Ydewalle, van Rensbergen, and Pollet 1987, Fernandez, Matamala and Vilaro 2014, Ghia 2012, Hefer 2011, Hefer 2013, Jensema, Danthurthi, and Burch 2000, Jensema, Sharkawy, Danturthi, Burch and Hsu 2000, Krejtz, Szarkowska, and Łogińska 2015, Kretj, Szarkowska, and Kretj 2013, Kruger 2013, Kruger and Steyn 2014, Kruger, Doherty, Fox, and de Lissa forthcoming, Kruger, Hefer and Matthew 2013, Künzli and Ehrensberger-Dow 2011, Mäkisalo, Gowases, and Pietinen 2013, Perego, Del Missier, Porta, and Mosconi 2010, Rajendran, Duchowski, Orero, Martinez and Romero-Fresco 2011, Romero-Fresco 2010, Specker 2008, Szarkowska, Krejtz, Klyszejko and Wieczorek 2011, Szarkowska, Krejtz, Pilipczuk, Łukasz, Kruger 2016, Winke, Gass and Sydorenko 2013 A saccade is the rapid movement of the eye between one fixation and the next. ...
... Saccade Count is the raw numerical count of saccades in the given area, and Saccade Length/Duration reports the respective length of time. Saccadic measurements are uncommon in eye tracking studies of subtitle and caption processing (D'Ydewalle and De Bruycker 2007, Ghia 2012, Kruger and Steyn 2014, Rajendran, Duchowski, Orero, Martinez and Romero-Fresco 2011, Specker 2008, Szarkowska, Krejtz, Klyszejko and Wieczorek 2011 Lastly, Pupil Dilation is the size of the pupil at a given time as measured and reported in millimetres. This can be captured from one or both eyes and is often also reported as Pupil Diameter (Caffrey 2008b, Caffrey 2009, Caffrey 2012, Kruger, Hefer and Matthew 2013. ...
... The latter is also reported as Regressions and Regressive Eye Movements. The measurement of these sequences of fixations is widely reported on in raw number, duration of time, and in the amplitude of the movements(Bisson, Van Heuven, Conklin, and Tunney 2014, D'Ydewalle and De Bruycker 2007, Fox 2016, Ghia 2012, Mäkisalo, Gowases, and Pietinen 2013, Perego, Del Missier, Porta, and Mosconi 2010, Specker 2008. ...
This chapter charts the development of eye tracking in the context of empirical research on subtitling and captioning, including foreign and same-language variants. It forms a critique of the eye tracking measures and methodologies in this field of research. In doing so, we provide a contemporary and accessible critical overview of how individual eye tracking measures are employed in investigating how subtitles and subtitled products are received and processed, and how these measures are used to refine constructs of visual attention, cognitive load, and psychological immersion in the context of subtitle and caption processing. We bring together a comprehensive collection of empirical eye tracking studies spanning three decades in order to consolidate what we have learned, what we need to improve upon, and where we can go from here to understand more about eye tracking the moving image.
... For instance, Sanders & Stern (1980) also used regression to study the effects of text characteristics, and Ashby et al. (2005) found that regression reflected the reading proficiency of readers. Furthermore, for dynamic text Specker (2008) used regression as an additional metric to support the fixation-based analysis of eye movements in subtitles. ...
Using eye-movement analysis, the article examines the reading process of speech-to-text interpretation involving dynamic text emerging letter by letter on the screen. The article focuses on regressions of gaze as well as on their relationship to linguistic factors in order to reveal how the reader's gaze behaviour reflects the reading process of dynamic text. The data come from an experiment where participants read a dynamic text on a computer screen. The results showed that the first and second landing points of regressions were generally (90.8%) content words, even though the proportion of content words in the whole data set was only 57.1%. The test subjects looked for nouns, verbs and adjectives in order to construct the meaning of what they had just read. Nouns were the most likely landing points of regressions. The landing points of regressions reflected the reading process through which the meaning of the text was constructed. In this kind of dynamic text, a typical cause of regressions seems to be incoherence resulting from omissions.
... Either way, studying this reading process, and the cognitive processing that takes place during the reading, is much more complicated than in the case of static texts where we know that the reader is mainly focussing on the words before her/him without additional auditory and visual information to process. While the viewing of subtitles has been the object of many eye tracking studies in recent years, with increasing frequency (see, for example Bisson et al. 2012; d'Ydewalle and Gielen 1992; d'Ydewalle and De Bruycker 2007; Ghia 2012; Krejtz et al. 2013; Kruger 2013; Kruger and Steyn 2014; Perego et al. 2010; Rajendran et al. 2013; Specker 2008; Szarkowska et al. 2011; Winke et al. 2013), the study of the reading of subtitles remains a largely uncharted territory with many research avenues still to be explored. ...
Full text available here:
http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2015/02/07/kruger-szarkowska-krejtz/
This article provides an overview of eye tracking studies on subtitling (also known as captioning), and makes recommendations for future cognitive research in the field of audiovisual translation (AVT). We find that most studies in the field that have been conducted to date fail to address the actual processing of verbal information contained in subtitles, and rather focus on the impact of subtitles on viewing behaviour. We also show how eye tracking can be utilised to measure not only the reading of subtitles, but also the impact of stylistic elements such as language usage and technical issues such as the presence of subtitles during shot changes on the cognitive processing of the audiovisual text as a whole. We support our overview with empirical evidence from various eye tracking studies conducted on a number of languages, language combinations, viewing contexts as well as different types of viewers/readers, such as hearing, hard of hearing and Deaf people.
... Sanders and Stern (1980) used it to study the effects of text characteristics and Ashby et al. (2005) found it to reflect the reading proficiency of readers. For dynamic text, Specker (2008) used it as an additional metric to support the fixation-based analysis of eye movements in subtitles. Sharmin et al. (2012) studied several dynamic text presentation formats and found the results concerning regressions to be in line with those based on fixation duration and number of fixations. ...
Print interpreting supports people with a hearing disability by giving them access to spoken language. In print interpreting, the interpreter types the spoken text in real time for the hard-of-hearing client to read. This results in dynamic text presentation. An eye movement study was conducted to compare two types of dynamic text presentation formats in print interpreting: letter-by-letter and word-by-word. Gaze path analysis with 20 hearing participants showed different types of reading behaviour during reading of two pieces of text in these two presentation formats. Our analysis revealed that the text presentation format has a significant effect on reading behaviour. Rereading and regressions occurred significantly more often with the word-by-word format than with the letter-by-letter format. We also found a significant difference between the number of regressions starting at the words that end a sentence and that of regressions starting at all other words. The frequency of rereading was significantly higher for incorrectly typed or abbreviated words than for the other words. Analysis of the post-test questionnaire found almost equal acceptance of the word-by-word and letter-by-letter formats by the participants. A follow-up study with 18 hard-of-hearing participants showed a similar trend in results. The findings of this study highlight the importance of developing print interpreting tools that allow the interpreter and the client to choose the options that best facilitate the communication. They also bring up the need to develop new eye movement metrics for analysing the reading of dynamic text, and provide first results on a new dynamic presentation context.
... These studies typically do not distinguish looking at subtitles from reading subtitles, and they tend to define crude areas of interest (AOIs), such as the entire subtitle area, which means that eye movement data are also collected for the subtitle area when there are no subtitles on screen, which further skews the data. Specker ( 2008 ) investigated the reading of scrolling or upward-rotating, three-line captions produced by means of respeaking, mainly looking at fixation counts and average fixation duration. Her inspection of the fixation plots for the subtitles gives a good interpretation of how the subtitles were read. ...
... In reading research, it has been found that individuals who are better readers should require fewer fixations per word because they are better able to predict the text and therefore tend to skip more words (see, e.g., Rayner, 1998, Rayner & Liversedge, 2004Specker, 2008 ). In this formula, it may at first seem as though less proficient readers (who have more fixations) would receive a higher RIDT score. ...
This article presents an experimental study to investigate whether subtitle reading has a positive impact on academic performance. In the absence of reliable indexes of reading behavior in dynamic texts, the article first formulates and validates an index to measure the reading of text, such as subtitles on film. Eye-tracking measures (fixations and saccades) are expressed as functions of the number of standard words and word length and provide a reliable index of reading behavior of subtitles over extended audiovisual texts. By providing a robust index of reading over dynamic texts, this article lays the foundation for future studies combining behavioral measures and performance measures in fields such as media psychology, educational psychology, multimedia design, and audiovisual translation. The article then utilizes this index to correlate the degree to which subtitles are read and the performance of students who were exposed to the subtitles in a comprehension test. It is found that a significant positive correlation is obtained between comprehension and subtitle reading for the sample, providing some evidence in favor of using subtitles in reading instruction and language learning. The study, which was conducted in the context of English subtitles on academic lectures delivered in English, further seems to indicate that the number of words and the number of lines do not play as big a role in the processing of subtitles as previously thought but that attention distribution across different redundant sources of information results in the partial processing of subtitles.
