Here’s the kind of advice I love — easy to use, helpful and fun, too. In the first ever study on this topic, doodling was found to be quite an effective tool for improving recall. Yes, I know it goes against common wisdom, but the study found that people who doodled while listening to a boring mock telephone message recalled 29% more of it than the non-doodlers.
Doodle your way to a better memory now!
Jackie Andrade, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom, told me how she set about studying the impact of something so ephemeral as aimless scribbles — otherwise known as doodling. Knowing she needed participants who were just tired enough that they might be in the mood to daydream, she asked people (ages 18 to 55) who were ready to go home after participating in an unrelated experiment if they would mind taking five minutes to help her with some research. Forty people agreed. All they had to do was listen to a rambling two-and-a-half minute phone message about party plans from a pretend-friend and write down the names of the eight people who were or might be coming. She didn’t tell them that cities would also be mentioned in relation to the party-goers.
Twenty participants were given pencils and plain lined paper to write down names… the other 20 were given pencils and unlined paper, with rows of open circles and squares in the right margin. To discourage the participants from focusing on the quality of their artwork, this group was given instructions to shade in the circles and squares when they weren’t writing down names. The researchers didn’t want anyone to feel self-conscious that an experimenter might observe their doodling.
The results? Both groups listed all eight names correctly on paper. Shortly afterward, Dr. Andrade casually asked all the subjects if they could also recite for her the names of the party-goers, along with the names of any places mentioned in the phone message. The doodlers recalled almost a third more information than the non-doodlers.
The study was published online at the Web site of the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology on February 27, 2009.
WHY DOODLING HELPS MEMORY
Why is doodling so helpful in recall? Dr. Andrade surmises that “the doodlers were able to pay better attention because they were combining doodling and listening tasks, which engage more of the brain’s executive functions [your brain’s CEO] so the brain can’t daydream.” “Daydreaming is distracting,” she explained. “It makes paying attention to the task at hand all but impossible.”
So, next time you find yourself listening to boring information that you really should remember, try doodling and see if it helps. Just be careful not to turn your aimless scribbles into works of art — or else you risk engaging too much of your brain and the odds that you’ll remember the details plummet.
Source(s):
Jackie Andrade, professor of psychology, University of Plymouth Devon, United Kingdom.
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Reprinted with the permission of:
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