Review: Andrade (Doodling)
Psychology
Being
Investigated
AIM
How cognitive processes like memory can be influenced by doodling and focusing concentration.
Cognitive psychologists are interested in the processes (attention, memory, decision making,
language) that work within the mind and how these affect behavior, and in how these processes can
be supported to improve the outcome such as better memory
To test whether doodling aided concentration in a boring task
Hypothesis
Research
Method/
Design
Variables:
IV & DV
Sampling
Method
Sample
Procedure
“Predication that doodling aids concentration”
Laboratory
Independent Measures- doodling and control group
IV: Participants given paper to doodle on (experimental) or given a lined piece of paper (control) to
write people
DV: Amount of recall remembered from the mock telephone message
 Monitoring task test (test on the names of people who would be attending the party)
 Recall task test (names of places mentioned); was an unexpected test
 Tests were counterbalanced (half were tested on names first, other half on places)
 How DV was measured:
o plausible mis-hearings, such as ‘Greg’ for ‘Craig’ were scored as correct
o new names were scored as false alarms
o terms such as ‘sister’ were ignored
monitoring performance (name recall) was scored as correct names minus false alarms
Opportunity: They volunteered for a different study but were recruited via opportunity sampling
once the original study had been conducted.
The researcher approached them to ask if they would spend another 5 minutes taking part in this
study.
 40 people from Medical Research Unit
 Paid for participating
 Ages 18-55 Mostly Females- from the general population
 20 Control (2 males)
 20 Experimental (doodlers/3 males)
 One replaced for not doodling
Materials:

Mock telephone message recorded on audio tape; 2.5 min long, boring on purpose, average
speaking rate and comfortable volume; included 8 names of people attending a party, names of
3 people and a cat who would not attend, 8 place names, much irrelevant material
 Pencil for each participant
 For experimental group: one lined sheet of paper
For control group: one sheet of paper with alternating rows of shapes of squares and circles; 10
shapes per line. 4.5 cm margin on left gave space for writing target information
Participant Told: “I am going to play you a tape. I want you to pretend that the speaker is a friend
who has telephoned you to invite you to a party. The tape is rather dull but that’s ok because I don’t
want you to remember any of it. Just write down the names of people who will definitely or
probably be coming to the party (excluding yourself). Ignore the names of those who can’t come.
Do not write anything else.”
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Data Collection
Participants placed into 2 groups (Doodle/Control)
o Those in doodle were given a paper with alternating rows of squares and circles (10 per
row). Margin on left to write down target information (People attending party). Told
“it doesn’t matter how neatly or how quickly you do this- it is just something to relieve
the boredom”
o subjects were told to shade in the squares and circles on the paper while listening
Doodling condition used a pencil to shade shapes of approximately 1cm diameter printed on A4
paper.
o 10 shapes per row alternating squares and circles
o 4.5 cm wide margin on the left hand side allowed for writing down information
Participants were given lined paper to write target information
Participants led to a dull and quiet room and listen to a monotone message for 2.5 minutes (227
words per minute)
When finished, researcher collected sheets and talked to participants for a minute. During these
time researchers apologized for deception of experiment and its true nature
Participants then debriefed and asked if they suspected anything (Demand Characteristic)
o 3 participants in the doodling condition and 4 in the control group suspected memory
test.
o All claimed to actively try to remember the information
▪ Data Type: Quantitative
▪ Data Analysis: Surprise test of recalling names and places or vice versa
Results
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Conclusion
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Doodle group shade an avg of 36.3 shapes (range 3-110)
Doodle 7.8/8 correct names-1 false alarm; control 7.1/8 correct names- 5 false alarms.
Each participant was given a monitoring performance score- # of correct names written
down minus the # of false alarms
15 doodlers and 9 controls scored 8 (maximum)
Recall:
▪ Doodle memory=7.5 recall of names and places (7.1/8 names)
▪ Control memory 5.8 recall of names and places (7.1/8 names)
Done by adding memory scores for both
Overall 29% more for doodlers
Memory for both monitored and recall (Doodling Wins)
“participants who performed a shape-shading task…. Concentrated better on a mock
telephone message than participants who listened to the message with no concurrent task”
Doodling helps concentration on primary task since doodling participants performed better
on both monitored and incidental tasks.
But why? Because doodlers performed better on both tasks there are 2 explanations.
1. Doodlers noticed more of the target words because the effect on attention
2. Doodling encourages deeper information processing
Did not measure daydreaming (which blocks attention)
Evaluation:
Not generalizable
Generalizability Small sample
Not diverse-mostly female
▪ As the sample was from a volunteer participant panel:
▪ The participants may be qualitatively different from other people (they may be more
motivated than others to perform in a study)
▪ The results may not reflect the population as a whole: that is, the effects of doodling my
only be applicable to the sample
Evaluation:
Reliability
High level of standardization and can be replicated to test reliability:
 Standardized procedures: the rate of speaking and the same dimensions of paper for those
in the doodling group. All participants were equally likely to be bored and therefore
daydream- achieved by monotony of the recording, using a dull, quiet room and asking
them to do the experiment when they were expecting to go home.
 This means other researchers could easily replicate this study to test reliability
Reliability increased because of: and replication
Standardization
Evaluation:
Application to
everyday life
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Evaluation:
Validity
Validity increased because of:
 Ensuring participants were equally bored and the operationalization of doodling. Make it so
researchers could be sure differences in results between conditions were due to doodling
 low ecological validity
 In lab experiments participants take part in tasks that are nothing like real-life ones, so the
tasks lack mundane realism
o Listening to a tape recording and then having an unexpected recall test is not a
usual task for people in everyday life.
Doodling could be a useful strategy when we have to concentrate and don’t want to. (Boring
lecture) Stops our minds from straying (daydreaming) and be better able to focus on primary
task.
Evaluation:
Ethics
Debates:
Individual v.
Situational
Individual- participants may have used a similar strategy before or a personality type
requires extra stimulation
Situational-The process of doodling, in this situation, could have caused the
improvement in recall.
Debates:
Nature v.
Nurture
Debates: Use
of Children
N/A
Debates: Use
of Animals
N/A
N/A
that