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