Subtitle Engagement Varies with Audio–Subtitle Language–Script Pairing: Evidence from Hindi–English Bilinguals with an English-Medium Instruction Background

Subtitles often attract visual attention even when they are not necessary for comprehension. In the present eye-tracking experiment, we examined whether attention to subtitles in instructional videos varies as a function of audio–subtitle language–script pairing in Hindi–English bilinguals with an English-medium instruction (EMI) background. Native Hindi participants viewed videos in three conditions: English audio with English subtitles (L2–L2), Hindi audio with Hindi subtitles (L1–L1), and English audio with Hindi subtitles (L2–L1). In the L2–L2 condition, gaze was distributed similarly across speakers’ faces and subtitles. In contrast, in both Hindi-subtitle formats, viewers allocated more dwell time to the speakers’ faces than to the subtitles. Comprehension scores did not differ significantly across conditions. These findings suggest that subtitle engagement among EMI bilinguals is not solely determined by the presence of subtitles but is also modulated by the properties and perceived utility of the written channel. More generally, our results caution against the view that subtitle engagement is uniformly automatic across multilingual instructional settings.