Watching study videos at double speed doesn’t hinder learning

The killer app for this might be variable speed rate where it goes slower for sections with more meaningful or linguistically complex sections and skips white space. Would probably be helpful for podcasts too.

The study recruited 231 students into four different playback speed groups (normal speed, 1.5X, 2X and 2.5X). Each group watched a pair of short lecture videos and then immediately completed a 40-question comprehension test.

Little difference was found between the normal playback speed group and the 1.5 times or double speed groups. They all performed similarly on the tests, but the group watching videos at 2.5 times normal speed displayed minor learning impairments. A second test a week later saw similar results, suggesting neither short- or long-term comprehension was negatively affected by watching videos at faster playback speeds.