Next time you’re in a board meeting, doodling on a piece of paper, you can confidently tell your boss you’ve heard every word he’s spoken — probably more than the guy next to you, according to a study by the University of Plymouth’s Psychology department.

Researches discovered that when split in to two groups, one asked to shade in random shapes, one asked to just sit and listen, while listening to a boring phone message nearly 30 per cent of the doodling group had increased recall. No participant was told that this would be a test of their memory.

After the tape finished, the participants were asked to recall all sixteen names mentioned in the tape, which were all incidental in style; the doodling group recalled 7.5 names while the non-doodling group could only recall an average of 5.8.

“If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream, daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task,” said the researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, “In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process. If that process is important for the main cognitive task then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade.”

The study can be found in the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology under the title “What Does Doodling Do?,” DOI: 10.1002/acp.1561.

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