Multimedia pedagogical agents are on-screen characters that allow users to navigate or learn in multimedia environments. Several agents’ characteristics may moderate their instructional effectiveness, including appearance, gender, nonverbal communication, motion, and voice. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to test hypotheses from diverse theories predicting the effects of these agents’ characteristics. We tested predictions of cognitive load theory, cognitive theory of multimedia learning, computers are social actors, social agency theory, uncanny valley, and the action observation network. Our meta-analysis of 32 effect sizes (N = 2104) revealed a small overall effect (g+ = 0.20), showing that learning with multimedia pedagogical agents was more effective than learning without these agents. As predicted by the redundancy effect of cognitive load theory and the coherence principle of cognitive theory of multimedia learning, 2D agents (g+ = 0.38) tended to be more effective than 3D agents (g+ = 0.11). As predicted by the computers are social actors hypothesis, most of the agents’ characteristics, including nonverbal communication, motion, and voice, appeared not to moderate their effectiveness. We conclude that multimedia pedagogical agents help learning through multimedia, and that students may be able to learn similarly from different types of agents.

多媒体教学代理是屏幕上的字符，允许用户在多媒体环境中导航或学习。某些行为者的特征可能会降低其教学效果，包括外观，性别，非语言交流，动作和语音。在这里，我们进行了荟萃分析，以测试来自各种理论的假设，这些假设预测了这些因素的特征的影响。我们测试了认知负荷理论，多媒体学习认知理论，计算机是社会角色，社会代理理论，离奇谷和行动观察网络的预测。我们对32种效应大小（N  = 2104）的荟萃分析显示，总体效应较小（g+ = 0.20），表明使用多媒体教学代理人进行学习比不使用多媒体代理人进行学习更为有效。正如认知负荷理论的冗余效应和多媒体学习认知理论的连贯性原理所预测的那样，2D代理（g + = 0.38）往往比3D代理（g + = 0.11）更有效。正如计算机所预测的是社会行为者假说，大多数行为者的特征，包括非语言交流，动作和声音，似乎并没有减弱其有效性。我们得出的结论是，多媒体教学代理人可以帮助通过多媒体进行学习，并且学生也许可以从不同类型的代理人那里类似地学习。