supposed to be paying attention
to something else. In fact, the word
doodle once meant a simple or
foolish person, like “Yankee Doodle”
in that silly, catchy song from the
eighteenth century. But is a person
who doodles really being foolish?
Jackie Andrade of the University of
Plymouth in the United Kingdom
wondered if doodling really makes
it harder to concentrate, or if this is
a mistaken assumption. So she set
up a test.
In her 2009 study, 40 adults were
split into two groups of 20. Both
groups listened to the same long,
boring phone message. They had
to write down who was invited to
a birthday party. But the speaker
kept rambling on about other
things, such as the colors she used
to redecorate her kitchen and her
recent vacation. One group wrote
down the names on a piece of plain
paper. The other group got a page
with shapes on it. They were asked
to shade in the shapes as they
listened while also writing down
the names.
After the test was complete, the
participants turned in their papers.
Then they had to try to recall the
names they’d written down, as well
as the names of places mentioned
in the message. The people who
doodled recalled 29 percent morepieces of information than the
ones who didn’t. That’s right—
doodlers performed better on a
memory test than non-doodlers!
Andrade doesn’t think that
doodling improves concentration.
Rather, she thinks doodling may
help prevent daydreaming. The
act of making simple marks
could keep the mind occupied
enough to prevent it from
wandering too far and ignoring
the boring phone call (or class
or meeting) completely. The big,
surprising takeaway, though, is
that doodling has the potential
to help keep a person focused
during a boring task.