In the modern age, we often consume content at faster than its normal speed. Prior research suggests that watching lecture videos at speeds up to 2x does not significantly affect performance, but the mechanisms by which comprehension is preserved at faster playback speeds are not fully understood. Therefore, we sought to investigate whether there is an effect of speed when the content is audio only, varies in modality (audio-only, audio-visual) and content (textual, pictorial), or is accompanied by distractions. In four experiments, we found that: (1) increasing playback speed to 2.5x speed did not impair test performance (though we still do not advise exceeding 2x speed); (2) having a visual aspect (i.e., presentation slides, instructor images) to learning can be advantageous, especially when processing information at faster speeds; (3) there was a small benefit of receiving textual over pictorial presentations, and the effect did not vary by speed; (4) computer-based distractions (i.e., phone calls, text messages, email notifications) did not impact performance at 1x or 2x speed. Hence, students are more adept at learning at faster speeds than conventional wisdom would suggest, even with distractions present, demonstrating intact comprehension at double the natural speed of to-be-learned material. Furthermore, multimedia presentations can help mitigate the negative costs of accelerated speeds, especially when information is processed by separate working memory components (i.e., narration in the auditory channel, text or pictures in the visual channel), which reduces cognitive load.

在现代，我们消费内容的速度常常比正常速度快。先前的研究表明，以高达 2 倍的速度观看讲座视频不会显着影响性能，但以更快的播放速度保持理解的机制尚不完全清楚。因此，我们试图调查当内容仅为音频、模式（仅音频、视听）和内容（文本、图片）不同或伴有干扰时，速度是否会受到影响。在四个实验中，我们发现：（1）将播放速度提高到 2.5 倍速并不会影响测试性能（尽管我们仍然不建议超过 2 倍速）； (2) 视觉方面（即演示幻灯片、教师图像）对学习来说是有利的，特别是在以更快的速度处理信息时； (3) 接收文本比图片呈现有一点好处，而且效果不随速度而变化； (4) 基于计算机的干扰（即电话、短信、电子邮件通知）不会影响 1 倍或 2 倍速度下的性能。因此，即使存在干扰，学生也能以比传统观点更快的速度学习，以两倍于学习材料自然速度的速度表现出完整的理解力。此外，多媒体演示可以帮助减轻加速速度的负面成本，特别是当信息由单独的工作记忆组件处理时（即听觉通道中的叙述，视觉通道中的文本或图片），从而减少认知负荷。