'The Drawing Effect' - Latest Research
If you want to boost your ability to recall information then get sketching!
Latest research shows that drawing is a brilliant way to boost your chances of remembering.
This is great news if you need to revise a topic, or memorise information because even a simple sketch will do the trick.
'The Drawing Effect' by Jeffrey D. Wammes, Melissa E. Meade and Myra A. Fernandes is a series of studies published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Vol 6 Issue 9 - 2016.
In one part of the study participants were given lists of easily drawable words e.g. apple, and asked to either repeatedly write a word for 40 seconds or to draw it. Then after completing 'filler' tasks they were given surprise memory tests.
Researchers found that:
- People recalled more than double the number of words they had drawn compared with words that were written.
Furthermore - in other parts of their research they discovered that:
- Drawing worked better than writing descriptions of the meaning of words
- Drawing worked better than just looking at the pictures
- Drawing worked better than visualising the words
Click here to read an abstract of the study and also for the complete research paper.