To understand the role of each underlying mechanism, Fernandes, Wammes, and Meade investigated whether memory performance would increase with the number of components – elaborative, motoric, or pictorial – used in a given encoding strategy. The authors have also found that drawing promotes better recognition than writing due largely to the high detail and rich context: Participants identified the source of the memory with greater accuracy when it had been drawn, and more regularly recalled contextual features. Another study found that participants who wrote a definition in their own words had a similar advantage as drawing, indicating that transcribing information has little benefit for learning. Drawing had a significant advantage for memory performance over writing verbatim, even after controlling for preexisting familiarity with the terms. They had 60 seconds to draw an image representing a term, such as “spore” or “isotope,” or write the definition verbatim. The primary experiments showed an advantage of drawing depictions of individual words, but does it help when learning more complex concepts? In one experiment, participants read 20 definitions of scientific terms containing nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This suggests that the benefits of drawing may be due to the additional motor component of moving a pencil, and the elaborative process that occurs when creating and viewing an original picture. Drawing resulted in the best recall performance compared with the other modes of encoding, even those that included visual imagery. To rule out visual imagery as an alternate mechanism, the researchers designed multiple experiments in which participants encoded words by either visualizing a picture in their mind or viewing a picture of it, in addition to drawing or writing. For all trial types, participants showed better recall for words that were drawn than for those that were written. In another group, participants embellished the word with more writing or drew a picture of the word repeatedly. In one group of trials, participants would keep adding detail to their picture, or write the word repeatedly. Furthermore, the benefit does not seem to depend on participants’ artistic ability, and occurred even when they had only 4 seconds to draw.Īcross several studies, the authors instructed participants on the type of encoding strategy to use when learning around 30 individual words, like “truck” and “pear.” Participants had 40 seconds to either write the word or draw a picture, with trial types intermixed. When those strategies fall short, you might want to try embracing your inner artist: A recent article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science highlights research showing that drawing a picture when learning can boost memory recall.Īn array of experiments, designed and conducted by Myra Fernandes, Jeffrey Wammes, and Melissa Meade of the University of Waterloo, show that drawing to encode information surpasses other strategies, such as writing, mentally visualizing, or viewing photos of the information, in young adults and older adults. Reading aloud or acting something out can help us remember new information, but those strategies may not always be practical or appropriate for the setting. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.Psychological Science in the Public Interest.Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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