CLOSED-CAPTIONED TELEVISION PRESENTATION SPEED AND VOCABULARY

This study summarizes an extensive research project on closed-captione d television. Caption data were recorded from 205 television programs, Both roll-up and pop-on captions were analyzed. In the first part of the study, captions were edited to remove commercials and then process ed by computer to get caption speed data. Caption rates among program types varied considerably. The average caption speed for all programs was 141 words per minute, with program extremes of 74 and 231 words pe r minute. The second part of the study determined the amount of editin g being done to program scripts. Ten-minute segments from two differen t shows in each of 13 program categories were analyzed by comparing th e caption script to the program audio. The percentage of script edited out ranged from 0% (in instances of verbatim captioning) to 19%. In t he third part of the study, commonly used words in captioning and thei r frequency of appearance were analyzed All words from all the program s in the study were combined into one large computer file. This file, which contained 834,726 words, was sorted and found to contain 16,102 unique words.