The cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2021, 2022), which seeks to explain how people learn academic material from words and graphics, has developed over the past four decades. Although the name and graphical representation of the theory have evolved over the years, the core ideas have been constant—dual channels (i.e., humans have separate information processing channels for verbal and visual information), limited capacity (i.e., processing capacity is severely limited), and active processing (i.e., meaningful learning involves selecting relevant material to be processed in working memory, mentally organizing the material into coherent verbal and visual structures, and integrating them with each other and with relevant knowledge activated from long-term memory). This review describes how the theory has developed (i.e., the past), the current state of the theory (i.e., the present), and new directions for future development (i.e., the future). In addition, the review includes examples of the events and findings that led to changes in the theory. Implications for educational psychology are discussed, including 15 evidence-based principles of multimedia design.

多媒体学习的认知理论（Mayer，2021、2022）在过去四十年中不断发展，旨在解释人们如何从文字和图形中学习学术材料。尽管该理论的名称和图形表示多年来不断演变，但其核心思想始终如一——双通道（即人类对言语和视觉信息有独立的信息处理通道）、有限能力（即处理能力受到严重限制） ）和主动处理（即，有意义的学习涉及选择要在工作记忆中处理的相关材料，在心理上将材料组织成连贯的语言和视觉结构，并将它们相互整合并与从长期记忆中激活的相关知识整合）。这篇综述描述了该理论是如何发展的（即过去）、该理论的现状（即现在）以及未来发展的新方向（即未来）。此外，评论还包括导致理论变化的事件和发现的例子。讨论了对教育心理学的影响，包括 15 条基于证据的多媒体设计原则。