Psychology of Doodling (PDF)

## The Psychology being Investigated Jackie Andrade's paper focuses on attention and memory. She proposes that doodling, a habit often associated with loss of concentration, can actually enhance concentration when people are bored, helping them to pay attention and remember information better. ###...

## The Psychology being Investigated Jackie Andrade's paper focuses on attention and memory. She proposes that doodling, a habit often associated with loss of concentration, can actually enhance concentration when people are bored, helping them to pay attention and remember information better. ### Attention Put simply, attention refers to "the concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events" (Solso, 1995). Due to our limited cognitive capacity, attention is often selective, meaning we direct our attention towards certain information and filter out or ignore other input. When chatting to a friend in class, for example, you might ignore other students' conversations so you can fully focus on what your friend is saying. ### Memory Memory refers to the encoding, storage and retrieval of information, potentially leading to long-term retention. Often we try hard to remember information that we are told and make an effort to focus. We may even try a few strategies to help us remember things - for example, repeating the items to ourselves. Information that we do not focus on but we can recall is called incidental memory, meaning information that was remembered unintentionally, as is the case for so much of the input that we process every day. ### Concentration and doodling A doodle is a drawing, sketch or pattern created to pass the time rather than for any particular purpose. Sometimes people think a person who is doodling has lost interest and is no longer paying attention, but Andrade's study suggests that this may not be the case at all! She explains that doodling can help us to concentrate better, but only on tasks that are not very interesting. When we are bored, we sometimes start to daydream; we stop concentrating on events in the outside world and start focusing on our own thoughts - for example, when our next assignment is due, what we fancy for lunch or who would win in a fight between a porcupine and a puffer fish. If we want to concentrate on information that is frankly rather dull, it is important to employ strategies to stay focused. Common sense suggests that dividing our limited cognitive capacity between two tasks (doodling and listening) would lead to decreased task performance, but because these tasks require different ways of thinking, many people find that they are able to do both things at the same time. Furthermore, doodling may actually enhance concentration, by increasing arousal levels, inhibiting daydreaming and ensuring we remain alert to external stimuli. ### Andrade in Brief Forty participants listened to a very boring, pretend telephone message. Half were asked to shade specific shapes at the same time (the doodling group). All participants were asked to listen out for specific information in the message and write it down (Andrade calls this 'monitoring'). The doodlers recorded the names more accurately and remembered 29 per cent more information on a surprise memory test, which included both monitored and incidental information. Andrade concluded that doodling can enhance performance on a concurrent task through decreasing boredom, which can be an uncontrolled variable in some cognitive experiments. Her study, therefore, has important implications for both the research community and people in everyday situations, including schools and workplaces. ## Plan your own… Case study Andrade designed a laboratory experiment to test her ideas about attention, memory and doodling, but there are many other research methods that might be used to investigate these topic areas. Why not try designing a case study? ### Imagine… Dr Viktor is planning a case study on attention, memory and doodling. He is about to meet an interesting patient called Tu, who cannot stop doodling. He doodles constantly whenever he is listening, speaking, watching television and in meetings at work, as well as when playing with his children. ### What advice would you give Dr Viktor about how to conduct a case study to investigate Patient Tu's behaviour? ### Planning a case study A case study is a non-experimental method. When planning a case study, it is important that you identify who is being studied, what data will be collected and how it will be collected and analysed. Case studies use a range of data collection methods to collect in-depth data about the participant/s they are studying (also called triangulation). See page 187 for more information on case studies. | **Main features of a case study** | **Consider…** | |---|---| | Details about the participant or small group being studied | Case studies include rich and detailed information about one rare or unusual individual or small group. Who is Dr Viktor investigating as his case study? What details can you give about them? | | Details about the content of the study | Case studies include qualitative and quantitative data from both primary and secondary sources. How could Dr Viktor collect quantitative and/or qualitative data about Tu? Will he use primary and/or secondary data? | | Two or more techniques for data collection (triangulation) | Case studies use triangulation, meaning they collect data using two or more different techniques. Which techniques might Dr Viktor use? Can you give a detailed explanation as to how Dr Viktor will use these techniques to collect data about Tu's doodling? | | Analysis and interpretation | Case studies use various techniques to analyse/interpret the data. What techniques might Dr Viktor use to analyse the data collected about Tu's doodling behaviours? Consider the type of data that he has collected. | ### Evaluating your plan Dr Viktor shares your ideas with his colleagues. Some of them think it is a great idea; others are not so sure. Think about the practical strengths and weaknesses of your suggestions. | **Describe** | **Explain** | |---|---| | **Strengths** | How do case studies collect rich and in-depth data? | Why might the collection of in-depth data improve the validity of Dr Viktor’s research into doodling behaviour? | | **Weaknesses** | Why might it be difficult to replicate a case study? | How is it important for Dr Viktor’s research to be replicable? Why is there an issue if Dr Viktor interprets his data on Tu’s doodling subjectively? | | **Improvements** | Consider the weaknesses you gave above. How might you improve Dr Viktor’s procedure to overcome one of these issues? | How would this improvement affect the validity and/or reliability of the data Dr Viktor collects in the context of doodling behaviour? | It might be a bit late for these students, but could something as simple as shading shapes help increase their end-of-term grades? Remember, Andrade only thinks doodling helps increase concentration when we are bored. What else could the teacher try to improve the students' concentration and recall? <br> Figure 2.7 Could doodling have helped these students? <br> ## Learning Link The last study in the cognitive approach, Pozzulo et al. (line-ups) also examines the processes of attention and memory. The participants are told to pay attention to a short film and that they will be asked some questions about it afterwards. It is a little different to Andrade’s study as the input is visual (a film) not auditory (a telephone message) and they know they will be tested later. This means Pozzulo et al.’s participants probably tried harder to focus during the task. Unlike the Andrade study, they were not told to focus on anything specific in the film, just to watch carefully. Pozzulo et al. found differences between adults and children on their task. Do you think Andrade would have found differences if she had tested children as well as adults? You may like to come back to this once you have read about both studies in detail. ## Test Yourself 1. Explain why the study by Andrade is from the cognitive approach. [2] 2. The study by Andrade is based on the concepts of attention and memory. Explain what is meant by attention with reference to this study. [2] 3. Outline one reason why doodling might decrease concentration and one reason why doodling might increase concentration. [2] 4. Alexi wants to collect some qualitative data about teachers’ attitudes towards students who doodle in class. Explain one research method that Alexi could use to collect qualitative data for this study. [3] 5. Zara observes a meeting at her workplace and makes a list of everyone who was doodling during the meeting. She then tests everyone’s recall of the meeting to see whether those that doodled remembered the meeting better or worse than the people who did not doodle. Describe how Zara could present her findings, with reference to an appropriate graph. [2] 6. Irfan has read about Andrade’s study. He wonders whether playing with modelling clay would also help participants to focus while completing another task. Describe how Irfan could conduct a laboratory experiment to test whether using modelling clay improves focus. [10] ## 2.1.2 Describing Andrade (doodling) ### Think! Look at the results tables for Andrade’s study. Can you spot two findings that show that doodlers found it easier to pay attention while listening to the tape than the non- doodling control group? ### Think! Are you a doodler? If so, have you ever thought about why you doodle or when you do it? What kind of doodles do you like to make? ### Think! Andrade explains in detail why she asked her participants just to shade shapes rather than create their own more elaborate doodles. If she had allowed them to create their own spontaneous images, how do you think this might have affected the validity of the results? ## Methodology Andrade's participants had already participated in a study about giving directions when she asked them if they would listen to a boring message about a party. Why did she recruit them after they had already taken part in another study? ### Aims 1. To investigate whether doodling improves our ability to pay attention to (or concentrate on) auditory information (i.e. a message that is heard but not seen). 2. To investigate whether doodling affects later recall of auditory information. ### Research Methodology Andrade used a laboratory experiment to see if doodling helped people to concentrate and remember information from a mock (pretend) telephone message. ### Design and variables The study used an independent measures design as the researchers compared the performance of two separate groups of participants: an experimental/doodling group of 17 females and 3 males and a control group of 18 females and 2 males. Random allocation was used to control for participant variables - for example, differences in memory that might have affected recall of the target information. The order of recall was counterbalanced across the participants. The independent variable was whether the participants were allowed to doodle while they listened to the phone message or not. The participants in the doodling group were asked to shade alternating rows of ten circles and ten squares (approximate size: 1 cm in diameter) printed onto standard A4 paper. There were three main dependent variables: 1. **Monitoring accuracy:** the number of correct names (out of eight) recorded while listening to the tape; the researcher then deducted false alarms (i.e. wrong answers) from the total number of correct names to give the final monitoring performance score. 2. **Memory for monitored information:** number of correct names recalled (out of eight) after false alarms were deducted. 3. **Memory for incidental information:** number of correct places recalled (out of eight). ### Sample Forty participants aged 18-55 from the MRC Applied Psychology Unit participant panel were recruited for the study. They had all just finished another experiment (about giving directions) and the researchers asked whether they would mind staying for another five minutes to complete one more study. As the participants were already part of a pre-existing and readily available group, they were an opportunity sample. They were recruited in this way as the researcher wanted the participants to be 'ready to go home' to increase their level of boredom during the task. The MRC Applied Psychology Unit participants were members of the general population who had volunteered to participate in research projects and all were paid a small fee for their time. ### Procedure #### The tape (audio recording) The researcher audio-recorded a 2.5-minute mock telephone message about a party. The message was read in a flat tone of voice at a speed of 227 words per minute. The message mentioned: * Eight people who were able to come to the party: Jane, William, Claire, Craig, Suzie, Jenny, Phil and Tony * Three people and one cat who could not come to the party: Nigel, John, Nicky and Ben the cat (Andrade refers to these names as ‘lures’) * Eight places: London, Penzance, Gloucester, Colchester, Harlow, Ely, Peterborough and Edinburgh * A lot of other irrelevant information. #### Listening to the recording Each participant completed the experiment on their own in a quiet, dull room. The standardised instructions said: * They should pretend the speaker was a friend inviting them to a party. * The tape is rather dull but that is okay because they do not need to remember any of it. * Write down the names of the people who will (or probably will) come to the party (excluding themselves) and ignore the names of anyone who cannot come. * Do not write down anything else. The experimental group were given the A4 response sheets with the shapes to shade and a pencil. There was a 4.5 cm margin on the paper to record the target names. They were told to shade the shapes as they listened to the tape but not to worry about neatness or speed; it was ‘just something to help relieve the boredom’. Those in the control group were given a sheet of lined paper (with no shapes to shade). The tape was played at the same ‘comfortable’ volume for everyone and the participants wrote down the party-goers’ names as they listened. ### The surprise memory test Next, the researchers collected the response sheets and chatted to the participants for one minute. During this time, they revealed the deception; there would now be a surprise memory test! Half of each group were asked to recall the names first and then the places, and the other half were told to recall the places first and then the names. Finally, participants were asked whether they had guessed that there would be a memory test at the end. ### Analysing the responses The researchers included any names or places that they thought had simply been misheard as correct - for example, Greg for Craig. Incorrect names were coded as false alarms, including extra names of non-party-goers added into the message as ‘lures’. Andrade included these lures to see whether people would write down all names mentioned instead of just those going to the party. Words that were neither names nor places were marked incorrect - for example, sister. ## Results ### Amount of doodling The experimental group shaded an average of 36.3 shapes (range 3-110). One person did not shade any shapes so they were replaced with another participant. No one in the control group doodled on their lined paper. ### Monitoring accuracy | **Number of names correctly written down while listening to the recording** | **Number of people scoring full marks (8/8)** | **Number of people making false alarms** | |---|---|---| | **Mean** | **Standard deviation** | | | 7.8 | 0.4 | 15/20 | 5 | 7.1| 1.1 | 9/20 | 1 | **Doodlers (experimental group)** | | | | **Non-doodlers (control)** | | | The researchers calculated a final monitoring performance score by subtracting the number of false alarms from the number of correct names remembered (a wrong answer theoretically cancelled out a right answer). After these deductions, the results were as follows: | **Monitoring performance score (maximum score = 8)** | |---|---| | **Mean** | **Standard deviation** | | **Doodlers (experimental group)** | 7.7 | 0.6 | | **Non-doodlers (control)** | 6.9 | 1.3 | Monitoring performance was significantly higher in the doodling group compared with the control group. ### Recall performance | **Recall score (minus false alarms)** | |---|---| | **Monitored information (people’s names), maximum score = 8** | **Incidental information (place names), maximum score = 8** | **Total recall (monitored and incidental information), maximum score = 16** | | **Doodlers (experimental group)** | 5.1 (1.7) | 2.4 (1.5) | 7.5 | | **Non-doodlers (control)** | 4.0 (1.5) | 1.8 (1.2) | 5.8 | The total recall score (out of 16) was 29 per cent higher in the doodling group compared with the control group. Doodlers remembered both types of information (monitored and incidental) better than the control group and remembered monitored information better than incidental. The average number of false alarms was low (0.3) and almost identical across doodlers and controls, and monitored (names) and incidental (places) information. Andrade was concerned about the number of people who indicated that they thought there might be a surprise memory test (three in the doodling group and four in the control group). She ran the analysis again without their data. The doodling group still performed significantly better than the controls on the recall task. ## Conclusions Andrade concluded that doodling can improve concentration when listening, even when the task is rather boring. She also concluded that it can help us to remember information better, even when we are not expecting to have to do so. Andrade's participants were not told in advance that they would have to remember the names and places they heard on the tape. How do you think they felt when she revealed the ‘surprise’ test of recall? Were they all that surprised? ## Learning Link Andrade’s study clearly demonstrates that, when people get bored, they get distracted and this can lead to errors in tasks that require cognitive processing. In Chapter 3, you will read a study by Fagen et al. (elephant learning), in which the researchers tried to teach elephants a sequence of behaviours as part of a veterinary procedure. Just like Andrade’s human participants, sometimes the elephants got a little bored and distracted, especially if something more interesting was happening elsewhere! When their attention was diverted, they did not always show what they were able to do. Fagen et al.’s study was all about teaching a behaviour that was helpful in keeping the elephants healthy, but sometimes psychologists use animals to learn more about humans. Given that animals do not have spoken language, it is interesting to think about how boredom might affect animals in different ways to humans. Do you think elephants daydream? ## Study Tip The results of this study can be a little confusing. Monitoring accuracy refers to the number of correct names written down while listening to the tape. This is not the same as the monitoring performance score, which is the correct answer score minus false alarms. Once you have this clear in your mind, you have to remember that the researchers were not just interested in the participants' ability to pay attention (monitor and record the names while listening); they also wanted to know whether doodling improved people’s ability to recall both the monitored information and the information that they heard but were not told to pay attention to (the incidental information). ## Test Yourself 1. Outline what was meant by a false alarm in this study, with reference to one example. [2] 2. Describe the response sheets that were given to the experimental and control groups in this study. [4] 3. Identify the type of information that was most likely to be forgotten. Explain your answer with reference to the data. [2] 4. Describe two ways in which the study by Andrade is replicable. [4] 5. Explain one reason why Andrade used a control group. [2] 6. Andrade counted the number of correct names and places remembered in a surprise test of memory. What measure of spread was used to analyse this data? [1] ## 2.1.3 Evaluating Andrade (doodling) ### Think! The names Nigel, John, Nicky and Ben on the tape are referred to as ‘lures’. What did Andrade mean by this term and how did her use of lures improve the validity of her data? ### Think! Imagine you were a participant in Andrade’s doodling group. Do you think you would have shaded the shapes quickly or slowly and accurately? In the real study, one person shaded just three shapes and another shaded 110! Do you think that it was a strength or a weakness that Andrade told them it did not matter how neatly or quickly they shaded the shapes and that it was just a task to relieve the boredom? ### Think! Andrade’s study is a great example of a laboratory experiment that shows how doodling can improve concentration when the information is boring. Can you think of a way of designing a field experiment to see how doodling affects concentration when the task is interesting? Remember, everyone finds different things interesting and/or boring so you will need to consider how you operationalise your independent variable. How do you think the results will differ from Andrade’s study? * If one of Andrade’s participants had included Ben the cat’s name on their response sheet, how would Andrade have marked this? * What did she call this type of result? <br> Figure 2.8 Ben the cat was a little disappointed not to be able to make it to the party! <br> ### Ethical issues One weakness of Andrade’s study is that the participants were deceived about the true purpose of the study. Before listening to the tape, they were told, ‘The tape is rather dull but that’s okay because I don’t want you to remember any of it.’ This was not true as after the monitoring task participants were given a surprise test of recall for not only the monitored information (the party-goers’ names) but also the incidental information (the place names). Although deception was important (otherwise the participants would have concentrated more while listening to the recording), it meant that participants were unable to give their fully informed consent. ## Methodological Issues ### Reliability A strength of Andrade’s study is the highly standardised procedure, which means the study can be easily replicated. All participants listened to the same audio-recorded message, meaning the pace and tone were identical; they all completed the study in the same quiet, dull room; and the interval between the monitoring and recall tasks was always one minute. This level of consistency in the procedure means the study can be easily replicated to see whether doodling really does improve concentration on a boring task. ### Validity * **Experimental method and design** A strength of the design was that the order in which the participants recalled the monitored information (names) and incidental information (places) was counterbalanced. Half the participants in each group recalled the names first then the places and the other half recalled places first and then names. This improved the validity of the findings by minimising the impact of order effects - increased memory for incidental and monitored information could be attributed to the doodling and not the order in which they had been tested. * **Operational definitions** A weakness of this study was the operational definition of doodling. Andrade standardised the nature of the doodling by asking participants to shade 1 cm shapes, but in real life, doodling is generally a more creative and spontaneous activity. This is important because the conclusion that doodling aids concentration and recall may not be true for people who are allowed more freedom with regards to what, where and when they doodle. * **Confounding variables** A strength of the study is that Andrade checked to see whether any of her participants had detected the deception. Eighteen per cent (three of the doodlers and four of the controls) said they had guessed there may be a memory test afterwards, although none of these participants claimed to have tried to remember the information. Andrade was concerned about the potential impact this might have had, so she re-analysed the data without their scores and found the results to be the same. This was important because it helped to improve the overall validity of her findings regarding the impact of doodling on concentration and memory. * **The use of lures** A strength of Andrade’s telephone message was the use of the ‘lures’, meaning the names of people who were not attending the party (e.g. Nigel, John and Nicky). Participants who were not really listening to the content of the message and just listening out for names might have been ‘lured’ into writing an incorrect answer, which would have reduced their overall monitoring performance score. This improved the validity of the findings as it ensured Andrade was really measuring participants’ concentration as they had to listen carefully to what was said about each person, and not just record all the names that they heard. * **Objectivity and subjectivity** A weakness of the study was the decision to mark misheard words as correct. For example, in the monitoring task, if a participant wrote Greg instead of Craig, this was recorded as correct, and then later in the recall task if they wrote Greg again, this was also marked as correct. This is a weakness as an assumption is being made that certain incorrect names are ‘mishearings’ and not false alarms, meaning the coding of answers is rather subjective. * **Generalisations and ecological validity** * **Generalising beyond the sample** A weakness of this study is the overwhelming number of females in the study compared to males. Females made up 87.5 per cent of the sample, meaning it can be described as ‘gynocentric’. This is important as it means that generalising the findings to males must be treated with caution, until the study has been replicated with a more balanced sample. * **Generalising to everyday life** A weakness of this laboratory experiment is that the task was conducted in a highly controlled setting, which is unlikely to reflect the additional challenges of listening to a voicemail in a real-world setting. For example, the study took place in a quiet, under-stimulating room and the participants were asked to pretend that the speaker on the tape was a friend of theirs. Had the participants been in their own homes surrounded by other family members, pets, noisy neighbours and traffic sounds, doodling alone may not have been sufficient to help them concentrate on the message. This suggests doodling may be more effective in the laboratory and that the findings may lack ecological validity. ## Issues and Debates ### Individual and situational explanations A strength of this study is that it shows how attention and memory can be affected not just by participant variables (i.e. individual differences between people) but also by situational factors. Many people think of cognitive skills as fixed, measurable and relatively stable traits (e.g. ‘He has a really good memory’ or ‘I am easily distracted’), but this study shows how other demands placed on us (e.g. not being allowed to doodle) can limit our cognitive performance. This is important and suggests that parents, teachers and employers should be aware that making small adjustments to the situation can help people to improve their performance. ### Applications to everyday life * **Supporting students** Leading on from the point above, a further strength of this study is that it could be used as evidence to support recommendations for teachers. Andrade’s study demonstrates that a second task such as doodling can improve concentration, allowing us to remember more of what we have heard. This is an important finding as many teachers punish their students for doodling in class, but this study suggests that raising awareness of the benefits of doodling may be an important addition to teacher training. ## Reflections Andrade’s findings suggest that concentration and memory can be improved by allowing people to doodle while listening to a speaker, but the small sample size means that there was little analysis of individual differences within the data. It is likely that multitasking may be beneficial to some people but not to others and it is also likely that the nature of the task in this study impacted the findings. Shading shapes is very different to creating your own spontaneous image, which is likely to require more cognitive capacity and may have the opposite effect on concentration and memory. For this reason, Andrade’s findings should not be overstated as doodling can take many forms and is likely to affect people in different ways. Andrade’s sample only included adults. Do you think doodling might have a different impact on children’s concentration and recall? How could you investigate this? <br> Figure 2.9 Could doodling help children to concentrate? <br> In 2017, Boggs et al. conducted a partial replication of Andrade’s doodling study aiming to extend her findings by looking at multiple different types of doodling. They argue that their findings have greater ecological validity as they included a freestyle doodling group, whose members were not constrained to shade shapes but could doodle as they pleased. The student participants (n = 93) listened to a fictional conversation about an earthquake and completed a fill-in-the-gaps quiz to test their recall of the details. In addition to a structured doodling group and control group, there were two extra groups: the free-doodlers and a note-taking group. Interestingly, the free-doodlers had less accurate recall than the structured doodlers and the notetakers. * Think back to Andrade’s explanation of why doodling should increase performance. Can you explain why free-doodling had the opposite effect?