Is watching lecture videos at 2x speed bad?

Описание: When I watch pre-recorded lectures, I often watch them at a 1.5 or 2 times speed, but every time I do, I’m concerned that I’m not absorbing as much as I could.

Does speeding up online lectures come at a cost to performance?

According to a new paper in Applied Cognitive Psychology, within some limits, the answer is no.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, published a study in the international journal, Applied Cognitive Psychology that “fast replay” does not reduce the learning effect and can actually increase the effectiveness.
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The study involved 231 students from UCLA perform a comprehension test after watching YouTube clips on real estate appraisals and the Roman Empire.
Different students watched them at standard speed, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 times speed. The screen size was set to the full screen, and they were told not to pause or take notes during viewing. Each student took one test immediately after watching the video and another, a week later to gauge how much students absorbed the content.

The researchers actually found that students who had viewed the videos at speeds of 1.5 times and 2 times did not show any reduction in comprehension results compared to those who watched at the normal rate.

However, participants who watched videos at speeds of 2.5 times or more showed significant reduction in performance.
Fascinatingly, the study also found that students who had watched the videos at double-speed twice, immediately before the test performed higher than those who watched the video only once.

Of course, the experiment may have different impacts depending on the subject you study.
However, it seems that it is okay to speed up playback as long as the video content can be accurately perceived and understood.

So, when you’re cramming for your next exam, watching a lecture twice at double speed may be more beneficial than watching it once at normal speed.