ANDRADE

(DOODLING)
A N D R A D E , J . ( 2 0 1 0 ) . W H AT D O E S D O O D L I N G D O ? A P P L I E D C O G N I T I V E P S Y C H O L O G Y, 2 4 ( 1 ) ,
100-106)
 AIM
— Andrade wanted to study
whether doodling can help
information processing, by
enabling people to attend
more effectively or by
enhancing their memory.

—Therefore the core question
is- Will doodling increase the
recall of monitored information
as well as incidental
information?
Doodling – sketching of patters and figures that are
unrelated to the primary task,
This could take resources away by dividing attention on
two task or improve performance by raising arousal and
enhancing focused attention.
 BACKGROUND
➤Past research has scanned the brain to find that
higher brain activity in people performing boring
tasks is associated with daydreaming.

➤People tend to daydream when faced with a

boring task, which divides attention from the
task they need to perform. This reduces the
quality of performance on both tasks, e,g day
dreaming + listening to a message.

➤DayDreaming is also linked to high arousal

when we are bored,

➤It
uses important cognitive resources such as
the central executive in the working memory.
HOW DOES DOODLING IMPROVE INFORMATION PROCESSING?
➤Since day dreaming overloads the resources
needed from the central executive(CE) for
functioning. Other more important tasks such as
memory and attention suffer, as they also work
with CE resources, that are now used by day-
dreaming.
➤Research shows that doodling, can reduce day-
dreaming and simultaneously maintain arousal.
➤Doodling requires the visuo-spatial sketchpad,
while listening to a message is an auditory task
processed in the phonological loop (WMM).
These are separate areas of processing, andare
less likely to interfere with each other.
HOW DOES DOODLING IMPROVE INFORMATION PROCESSING?
➤Althoughdoodling also increases load on the central
executive to give more of its resources, but this
demand is less as compared to day dreaming.
➤Doodling improves performance on a boring task by
either aiding the person's focused attention or
preventing his level of arousal from dipping.

➤ It places a continuous, low load on executive

resources, because of which less resources are used
for day dreaming.
➤ If doodling as a secondary task can help a person
control his mind from wavering off i.e. prevent him
from daydreaming, then this finding could be very
useful for research in psychology as well as for
people performing routine tasks in their daily lives.
METHOD
➤ Research method and design
laboratory experiment.
Independent measure design –
IV – Doodling or not doodling (Control
group or doodling group)
DV – 1. Names of party goers (only the
ones that were monitored and not the other’s
which were mentioned in the talk).
2. An unexpected test of the places
mentioned in the call.
The order of these two tests was
counterbalanced.
SAMPLE

Participants were 40 members of a participant

panel at the Medical Research Council unit
for cognitive research.
Aged 18-55 years old and were paid a small
fee. (So how is this useful)?

Control group – 20p (18Females & 2

Males)
Doodling group – 20 p (17Females
and 3Males)- Since 1 participant in this
group didn’t doodle so was replaced.
MATERIALS

• Read the telephone call script in the textbook pg.

• The ones that are highlighted are the ones which were monitored.
• If Ps recalled other names not highlighted they were considered False alarms.
• Final score for monitoring was the number of correct names minus false alarms
• Mishearings, such as “Greg” for “Craig” were counted as correct.
• Other words such as sister, were ignored.
Type of doodling sheet
➤ The control group were given a sheet of
lined paper to write their answers on.
(Which they could also have used for
doodling.)
RECAP
• State the DV’s of the study
• Identify one feature of the sample.
• Write a one tailed Hypothesis for this study.
• Suggest one improvement for the study.
• Explain one disadvantage of using an independent measures
design in the study.
• State two ways in which data was collected in this study.
PROCEDURE
PROCEDURE
RESULTS
RESULTS
Criteria Doodling group Control group
Monitoring task of Mean 7.8, Mean 7.1,
recalling 8 names SD= 0.4 SD 1 – 1.1

False alarms 1 person 5 people

Overall score of 7.5 names and 5.8 names and
names and places places places
CONCLUIONS

- Participants who performed a shape-shading task, intended as an analogue of naturalistic

doodling, concentrated better on a mock telephone message than participants who listened to
the message with no concurrent task.

- It is not clear whether doodling led to better recall simply because doodlers noticed
more of the target names or whether it aided memory directly by encouraging deeper
processing of the material on the tape.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
ACCORDING TO ANDRADE.
• No measure of Day dreaming. – A possible self- report of day dreaming
would add value in a replication of the study to check whether the
effect of doodling via memory occurred because of day dreaming.
• Additionally brain scans can be used to check if doodling reduced
activation of the cortex associated with day dreaming.
 +laboratory experiment. standardized conditions for each participant/group to
improve reliability. So?......

+lab 2. improve validity as there is control over external variables. So?......

+Collection of unbiased, quantitative data makes it more valid.so?.......

- Sampling. Limited representativeness because of skewed in favour of females,

only adult, from a shared background. So…….

EVALUA - Low validity due to analysis of daydreaming which can’t be measured

effectively… so?

TION - Lab experiment, unnatural environment as well as situation due to recording

and restricted doodling, hence it's extremely low ecological validity. so?..............
 - Risk of demand characteristics, caused by the fact some
participants suspected a memory test….. Which could have
invalidated the results.

There was consent taken

EVALUA + It can be argued that the researchers deceived the

participants into taking an incidental memory test.
However, they were testing concentration and memory and
TION hence this deception was necessary for the study. (the
scientific benefit is bigger than the cost of the participants.)