Doodling might help boost recall, psychologists find
Last Updated: Friday, February 27, 2009 | 1:31 PM ET
CBC News
Detail from a Costco webpage in 2005 advertising a purported Picasso doodle. (CBC)People might consider doodling a sign of a wandering brain, but new research suggests the scribbles may help us remember details.
Volunteers who were asked to doodle while listening to a dull telephone message were 29 per cent better at remembering details of the call than non-doodlers, British researchers write in Friday's online issue of the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.
The 40 volunteers were asked to listen to a 2½ minute tape and note down the names of eight people going to a party and eight other place names.
The doodlers recalled an average of 7.5 names of people and places compared with 5.8 among the non-doodlers.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," explained the study's lead researcher, Jackie Andrade, a psychology professor at the University of Plymouth.
Daydreaming distracts from the task and takes up mental effort so results in poor performance, psychologists say.
"A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
Both groups were told the message would be dull but did not know the study was about memory.
Doodlers were asked to shade in circles and squares while listening. They were told neatness and speed did not matter.
The researchers did not ask the doodlers to wing it, in case they felt self-conscious about their artwork.
The volunteers were mostly women and were between the ages of 18 and 55.
