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Abstract
Empirical evidence on the cognitive and evaluative effects of viewing a dubbed versus a subtitled film is limited, theoretical views on the subject are mainly speculative, and age-related differences have not been investigated in this sphere. To fill these gaps, we carried out two studies contrasting the effects of viewing a dubbed versus subtitled version of the same film excerpt in young and older adults, using a comprehensive array of verbal and visual measures. The findings clearly show that dubbing does not provide a cognitive or evaluative advantage over subtitling. Moreover, subtitling seems to be more effective than dubbing in supporting the lexical aspects of performance. Finally, although older adults always performed worse than young adults on all cognitive measures, they did not show a specific impairment in the subtitling condition. The results support the view that subtitled films are processed effectively and appreciated equally by both young and older adults.
Acknowledgements
All authors contributed equally to all stages of this research. This research was supported by the University of Trieste Research Fund FRA 2013, awarded to Elisa Perego.
Notes on contributors
Elisa Perego, PhD in Linguistics, is a tenured research fellow in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Trieste. Her research interests lie mainly in the field of audiovisual translation, specifically as far as subtitling, dubbing, and audio description are concerned. Besides considering the linguistic aspects that characterize these translation methods, she is interested in investigating their processing strategies.
Fabio del Missier is a tenure track assistant professor in General Psychology at the University of Trieste, Department of Psychology. His research is mainly focused on attentional and memory underpinnings of decision making, memory retrieval processes, and individual differences in cognition and decision making (including aging-related differences).
Sara Bottiroli, PhD in Psychology, member of SIPI (Società Italiana di Psicologia dell'Invecchiamento), currently has a research contract at the National Institute of Neurology C. Mondino in Pavia, and she studies age-related cognitive changes.
Notes
1. Psychological immersion is a mental state experienced by people caught up in a pleasant and involving activity. In mediated environments, immersion is frequently accompanied with: presence, i.e. the feeling of media users being spatially located in the mediated environment; transportation, i.e. the feeling of media users of being mentally drawn away from the actual physical environment into the world of a narrative; flow, i.e. the feeling of media users being intensely involved in and focused on a given activity to the extent of losing self-consciousness; enjoyment, i.e. the feeling of appreciation, attraction, preference, and liking experienced by media users (Csikszentmihalyi, Citation1988).
2. Event-related brain potentials, i.e. a non-invasive method of measuring brain activity during cognitive processing.
3. Pacing has been operationalized by counting the number of camera changes (i.e. cuts and edits) per minute. Such procedure results in four levels of edit: slow (zero to seven per minute), medium (eight to 15), fast (16–23), and very fast (> 24) (cf. Lang, Bolls, Potter, & Kawahara, Citation1999; Lang et al., Citation2000). In our video excerpt, the average number of edits per minute is 11. Moreover, as shown by the descriptive statistics in and , the film information was not too easy or too difficult to understand and remember.
4. The performance score for all the cognitive measures was the number of correct responses. The general comprehension and dialogue recognition questionnaires, the face–name association, and visual scene recognition tests included items covering the whole film excerpt.
5. The data of Study 1 and Study 2 have been aggregated to increase the power of the statistical tests related to these correlational analyses.
6. The ANCOVA (analysis of covariance) is an extension of the ANOVA that allows us to appraise the influence of covariate variables. Like the ANOVA, the ANCOVA is used to determine whether there are any significant differences between the means of the dependent variables (i.e., general comprehension, dialogue recognition, face-name association, and visual scene recognition) related to the effects of independent variables (translation method and age). However, the ANCOVA has the additional benefit of exherting statistical control over the potential effects of other variables (covariates), which may affect the dependent variables (i.e., fluid intelligence, vocabulary, and processing speed).
7. A similar pattern of results is also obtained when considering the subtitling condition only. We do not report the detailed results due to lack of space, but they are available on request.
8. This conclusion, although based on the absence of significant age X translation method interactions, is convincingly supported by the data. First, the absence of a significant interaction was consistently observed in all the tests carried out in Study 2. Then, the combined probability of the interaction effect in the tests carried out on the four main cognitive measures of Study 2, computed with Fisher's (Citation1948) method, was still non-significant [χ2(8) = 4.20, p = 0.84]. Finally, the means of the different groups, reported in , show no trace of potential interactions.