Andrade (2010) Doodling

Background and the psychology being investigated.

- It is believed that concurrent cognitive tasks have a negative impact on the performance on those
tasks. In other words, if you do two things at once, there will be an internal competition for which
things get attention.
- Researchers found that when an individual’s attention is divided, they tend to perform poorer,
however, doodling has been found to enhance concentration, perhaps due to the reduction of
daydreaming. Andrade defines doodling as sketching of patterns and figures that are unrelated to
the primary task.
- Prior to this study, it was not known whether the act of doodling does impair attention processes by
taking away resources from the primary attentional task or whether it actually aids concentration
towards primary task, additionally maintaining arousal.

Aim
To find whether doodling would aid concentration in a boring task.

Research method

- The experiment was a laboratory one since it took place in a controlled environment and the
participants would be highly unlikely to experience a phone call in such a situation.
- The independent variable (IV) was if the participants were in the ‘doodling’ or
‘non-doodling/control’ condition.
- The dependent variable (DV) was the mean number of correctly recalled names.

Research design: The participants were distributed to either the ‘doodling’ or to the ‘control’ condition
and therefore the experiment had an independent groups design.

Sample and sampling technique

- There were 40 individuals, who were members of the Medical Research Council Applied Psychology
Unit participant panel, with ages ranging from 18 to 55, at the University of Plymouth (UK).
- They had volunteered for a different study but were recruited using opportunity sampling from the
general population.
- They were paid a small sum for participating.

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- Participants were randomly allocated to the control (n= 20: 18 females and 2 males) or doodling
group (n= 20: 17 female and 3 males).

Materials used

- The researcher recorded a mock telephone message using an audio cassette recorder. A fairly
monotonous voice was used. The average speaking rate was 227 words per minute. The recording
was played at a ‘comfortable’ volume to listen to.
- The script included eight names of people attending a party, and names of three people and one cat
who could not attend. Eight place names were mentioned, along with much irrelevant material.
- Participants in the doodling group used a pencil and a piece of A4 paper with 10 shapes (1 cm
diameter square and circles in alternating rows); with a space for writing the target information.
- Participants in the control group were give a pencil and a lined piece of paper to write the target
information on.

Procedure

- Participants were recruited just after finishing an unrelated experiment for another researcher and,
on their way home, they were asked if they would mind spending another 5 minutes helping with
research. The intention was to enhance the boredom of the task by testing people who were already
thinking about going home.
- Participants were tested individually in a quiet and visually dull room.
- They were given standardized instructions: ‘listen to a dull/ boring tape, about a friend inviting you
to a party. Write down names of the people attending, ignoring the names of people who can’t
come and any other information.’ The phone call lasted 2.5 minutes.
- The ‘doodling’ group were provided an A4 paper with outlined shapes and encouraged to shade in
the squares and circles while listening to the tape, those in the ‘control’ group were given a sheet of
lined paper to write their answers on.
- They were told they will be tested on recalling the names of the individuals who will go to the party,
which was the ‘monitoring’ task. Additionally, there was a ‘recall’ task in which they were asked to
remember the names of the places mentioned. Counterbalancing was used (the order of the
‘monitoring’ and ‘recall’ task was randomized) in order to reduce order effects.
- The dependent variable was operationalized by accepting the names misspelled due to the
participants hearing it wrong and considering the names of the individuals who weren’t going to the
party as false alarms.

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- The final score was calculated by subtracting the false alarms from the number of correct names
provided.
- The experimenter debriefed the participants about the memory test and apologized for deceiving
them.

Results

- Participants in the doodling condition doodled 36 shapes on average, those in the control condition
did not.
- Participants in the ‘control’ condition provided correctly a mean of 7.1 out of 8 names with five of
them making false alarms while participants in the ‘doodling’ condition recalled a mean of 7.8 party-
goer names and only one false alarm was made.
- The ‘doodling’ group provided 29% more correct information about the names of individuals and
places than the ‘control’ one, their recall for monitored and incidental information was significantly
higher.

Conclusions

- Doodling was concluded to aid concentration since those who did doodle recalled more information
than those who did not.
- As those in the ‘doodling’ condition performed better on both the monitored and incidental tasks, it
can be assumed that they either noticed more words because their attention was enhanced, or their
memory was improved since doodling might have supported a deeper information processing. It is
difficult to assess which of these suggestions is more realistic due to there not being information
collected on the levels of daydreaming of individuals – a self-report or cortex activity brain scan
could have been taken.

Evaluation

Evaluation Related to Andrade

Strength The study had many standardized procedures. For example, the mock telephone message

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 lasted 2.5 minutes and was recorded in a monotonous voice at an average speed of 227
words per minutes. The recording was monotonous and the students were asked to take the
experiment when they were expecting to go home. This ensured that the participants were
equally likely to be bored and therefore likely to daydream. This means that the research was
more valid (as they could be sure the differences in results between the conditions were due
to doodling or not) and more reliable (because all participants were similarly bored).

Strength As they were many controls. For example, the script and the length of time participants were
talked to by the experimenter before the recall test was the same for all participants.
Participants were randomly allocated to each group. Andrade could be confident that it was
doodling itself that was causing a change in the recall rates, thus increasing the reliability of
the recall results.

Weakness Listening to a tape recording and the having an unexpected recall test is not a usual task for
people in everyday life. Therefore, the study can be said to be low in mundane realism.

Weakness Although the sample was varied in age (18 -55 years), they were all members of a medical
research panel who were paid a small sum for participation. This means they could be more
interested in the study and willing to spare their time to participate in the study. It could have
been a different case if the sample was from the general population or non-medical students.
This could bias the sample, lowering validity.

Weakness There was some deception in the study as participants were told they would not be expected
to remember any of the information on the tape-recorded message. However, when it was
over, they were given a surprise memory test. However, the researchers did apologise for this
test and did give a full debrief at the end of the study. This ensured that the participants did
not leave the study affected by the study.

Issues and debates

Application to everyday life The results may be useful for students when they are revising for
examinations. If students have a podcast to listen to while reading notes, it

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 could be useful for them to doodle at the same time.

Individual and situational In terms of individual explanations, participants may have used similar
explanations strategy before or have a personality type that could affect their
participation in the conditions. For example, people in the doodling group
may have just had a better memory compared to those in the non-doodling
group. Also, some participant allocated in the doodling group might never
have doodled and so it was a novel task for them.

In terms of situation, the process of doodling in a given situation could have

caused the improvement in recall rather then it being due to individual;
that is, the act of doodling is what helps people retain information.