This study investigated the segmenting and modality principles in instructional animation. Two segmentation conditions (active pause vs. passive pause) were presented in combination with two modality conditions (written text vs. spoken text). The results showed that the significant effect was found in relation to segmentation conditions, whereas the modality effect was not found. The groups with embedded questions (ie, active pause) between segments outperformed pause‐only groups (ie, passive pause) on both recall and transfer tests regardless of the mode of text. The findings of the study imply that a stimulus (eg, testing occasion) would be more effective than only pauses between segments.