COGNITIVE

APPROACH
Andrade
PSYCHOLOGY BEING
INVESTIGATED
 Working Memory Model: States that there are
two types of memories a person uses – visual
and auditory
 Daydreaming: A state of consciousness where
an individual appears to be ‘lost in thoughts’
 Focused Attention: When a person’s
concentration is focused on one primary task
 Divided Attention: When a person’s
concentration is divided between two tasks
such as listening to a song while focusing on
the road while driving
AIMS

 To test whether doodling aids concentration

in a boring task
METHOD & DESIGN
 Experimental Method: Lab experiment

 IV: The doodling group and the control group

(operationalized through the sheets of paper
provided to participants in the two groups)

 DV: Concentration and memory recall

(operationalized through the scores in monitoring
task and the recall task)

 Experimental Design: Independent Measures Design.

The participants were not repeated in any group.
SAMPLE
 40 participants (35 female, 5 male)
 All participants were part of an Applied
Psychology Panel at the University of Plymouth
 Age range was 18 – 55 years
 The participants had volunteered for a
previous study, and as soon as they completed
that study, Andrade approached them to
conduct her study which meant she took
opportunity of the fact that they were readily
available
 Sampling Technique: Opportunity Sampling
APPARATUS
 A mock telephone call in which the speaker was
inviting the listener to a party
 There were names of eight people who were
attending the party excluding the person
listening to the mock call
 There were names of three people who were not
attending as well as a cat named Ben
 There were also names of eight places in the
U.K. that were mentioned
 The mock call was rather dull and played at a
comfortable volume at 227 words per minute for
2.5 minutes
APPARATUS
 A sheet of A4 size paper with a 4.5cm margin
for writing target information
 This sheet of paper also had ten rows of
alternating squares and circles for doodling
 This was the sheet provided to the doodling
group participants
 The control group participants were given an
A4 size sheet of lined paper without any
shapes
PROCEDURE
 The participants were randomly allocated
equally to the control condition and the doodling
condition (20 in each)
 The participants were placed in a visually dull
room and were told to listen to a mock
telephone call and pretend that the speaker was
inviting them to a party
 They were told the tape was rather dull and that
they were not required to remember any of it
 The tape was played at a comfortable volume
and played at 227 words per minute for a total
of 2.5 minutes
PROCEDURE
 The participants were provided with an A4
size sheet of paper. Those in the doodling
condition had alternating rows of 10 squares
and 10 circles on their sheet with a 4.5 cm
margin on the left
 They were given a pencil and were told that
the shapes were there for them to shade into
if they got bored while listening to the mock
telephone conversation
 Those in the control group had an A4 size
sheet of lined paper without any shapes
PROCEDURE
 The participants were told to listen to the
mock call and pretend the speaker was inviting
them to a party, and to write down the names
of the people attending the party excluding
themselves, and nothing else
 This was the monitoring task and was
calculated as: correct names written minus
false alarms
 This would be a score out of 8 as there were
eight people attending the party
 False alarms refer to writing down names of
people who were not attending
PROCEDURE
 The names had to be written for them to be
counted – terms such as sister or neighbour
would be ignored
 Plausible mishearings were counted as
correct (e.g. writing Greg for Craig)
 After completing this task, the researchers
debriefed the participants and apologized to
them for telling them they were not required
to remember any of the information
 They were then asked to complete the recall
task
PROCEDURE
 The recall task involved participants recalling the
names of the people who were attending. This was
called recall of monitored information. It was
calculated as: correct names recalled minus false
alarms
 Along with this, they were also asked to recall the
names of eight places that were mentioned in the
tape which was not part of the monitoring task.
This was called the recall of incidental
information. It was calculated as correct places
recalled minus false alarms
 Plausible mishearings had to be the same as those
in the monitoring task
PROCEDURE
 This part of the procedure was counterbalanced
which refers to participants performing two tasks
(Task A and Task B for e.g.) in the order of AB and
then BA, rather than following the same order of
AB and then AB as this could lead to order effects
 It was counterbalanced by having half the
participants in each group do the recall task for
names first (monitored information) followed by
the recall task for places (incidental information),
and the other half doing the opposite – recall of
places first, followed by recall of names
CONTROLS
 All participants heard the same mock telephone
call

 It was played at a comfortable volume and at a

speed of 227 words per minute for 2.5 minutes

 All doodling participants had the same sheet of

paper with the same number of squares and circles
with a 4.5 cm margin

 All control group participants had the same A4 size

sheet of lined paper without any shapes
RESULTS
 One average, 36.3 shapes were doodled by the
doodling group and the range was from 3 to 110
 The monitoring performance score for the
doodling group was a mean of 7.7 with 1 false
alarm. The mean number of correct names
recalled itself was 7.8
 The monitoring performance score for the control
group was a mean of 6.9 with 5 false alarms. The
mean number of correct names recalled itself was
7.1
 The recall task score for names (monitored
information) for the doodling group was a mean of
5.1 and for the control group it was a mean of 4.0
RESULTS

 The recall task score for places (incidental

information) for the doodling group was a
mean of 2.4 and for the control group it was
a mean of1.8
 3 participants in the doodling group and 4
from the control group had suspected a
memory task when asked (when being
debriefed) and they said they made an effort
to try and remember the information –
qualitative data
CONCLUSIONS
 Doodling does aid concentration in a boring
task

 This was seen through the higher scores by

the doodling group participants in both the
monitoring task as well as the recall task for
both monitored and incidental information,
compared to the control group participants
INDIVIDUAL VS SITUATIONAL
DEBATE
 The study favours the situational side of the
debate as it was the situation the participants
were in – whether they had the sheet of paper
that enabled them to doodle or not, that led to
them showing higher levels of concentration and
memory recall
 However, there could have been individual
differences which might favour the individual
explanation as there might have been some
participants who genuinely had good memory who
were allocated to the doodling group which
allowed them to recall the information, rather
than because of doodling
EVALUATE THE STUDY BY ANDRADE IN TERMS OF
2 STRENGTHS AND 2 WEAKNESSES – 10 MARK
SAMPLE ANSWER
The aim of the study by Andrade was to test whether doodling aids
concentration in a boring task. One strength of the study was that it
was a lab experiment with high levels of controls such as a 2.5 minute
mock telephone call that was played at a comfortable volume at a
speed of 227 words per minute. This allows for the procedure to be
standardized and easily replicated to test for reliability. Another
strength is that quantitative data was gathered which is objective and
accurate and allows for results to be compared. For example, the
doodling group scored higher than the control in the monitoring task
with a mean of 7.8 compared to 7.1, and also higher in the recall task
for both monitored and incidental information with a score of 5.1 and
2.8 respectively, compared to the control’s score of 4.0 and 1.8
respectively. One weakness of the study was that it was low in
ecological validity as the setting was artificial with high controls and
the task of listening to a fake telephone conversation and recalling
information from it is low in mundane realism. A second weakness is
that the study had low generalisability as the sample size is relatively
small and comprised mostly of women, therefore it is not
representative of the male gender. Furthermore, all participants were
part of a Psychology panel and may be similar in certain ways, which
lowers the generalizability. To conclude, the study did prove that
doodling does aid concentration in a boring task and does lead to
memory recall of information
 Other points that could have been considered for the
evaluation:
 Strengths –
 Ethics (participants were debriefed at the end of the study
to ensure that they were protected from any long term
psychological harm. Their confidentiality was maintained
and they also provided consent to be part of the
experiment)
 Validity (the fact that participants were part of a previous
study meant they were already tired or bored which would
have helped with the experiment as its purpose was to test
whether doodling would aid concentration in a boring task.
Furthermore, they were placed in a visually dull room as
well. The tasks were also counterbalanced to improve
validity)
 Application to everyday life (students or even employees in
organizations can doodle during boring lectures or when
they are required to concentrate and note down or
remember important information)
 Weaknesses –
 Validity (there is no way to say for sure that it was
doodling that led to memory recall, as it could have
been possible that there were individual differences
as it was an independent measures design, which
meant there might have been some participants in
the doodling group who generally had better
memory. Furthermore, 7 participants showed
demand characteristics as they suspected the
memory recall task)
 Ethics (participants were deceived about not having
to remember anything. Furthermore, psychological
or emotional harm may have been caused as they
were made to listen to a boring mock telephone call)