Dubbing versus subtitling in young and older adults: cognitive and evaluative aspects

Empirical evidence about the cognitive and evaluative consequences of viewing a dubbed vs. a subtitled film is scarce, theoretical views on the subject are mainly speculative and age-related differences have not been investigated within this comparison. To fill these gaps, we carried out two studies contrasting the consequences of viewing a dubbed vs. 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 had a worse performance 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 at least as much by both young and older adults.