The purpose of this study was to determine whether a caption-viewing intervention presented with challenging instructional television program content can benefit hearing students' comprehension performance and improve attitudes toward captioning. A secondary purpose was to determine whether a long caption-viewing practice period results in greater comprehension performance and attitude improvement than does a short practice period.

The only significant differences found were pre- to post-treatment attitude increases within the short-practice and control groups. These mean increases of only a few points produced effects sizes of less than 0.5 and were not of practical significance.

Overall, the results revealed that captions, with or without an instructional intervention, did not affect hearing students' comprehension of program content or attitudes toward captions.