{"id":4169,"date":"2019-01-22T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4169"},"modified":"2019-01-23T10:33:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T15:33:44","slug":"does-drawing-a-simple-picture-benefit-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/does-drawing-a-simple-picture-benefit-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Drawing a Simple Picture Benefit Memory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many words is drawing a picture<\/em> worth?<\/p>\n

\"drawing<\/a><\/p>\n

More specifically, Jeffrey Wammes & Co. have been exploring this question: is it true that drawing benefits memory? If I draw a picture of a word, will I remember it better than if I simply wrote that word down several times?<\/p>\n

To explore this question, Wammes and his team have run a series of studies<\/a> over the last several years. Basically, they’re trying to disprove their own hypothesis. If they can’t disprove it…well, it’s increasingly likely to be true.<\/p>\n

The basic studies took a fairly simple form. Students saw a word and then spent 40 seconds drawing a picture of it. Or, they saw a word and spent 40 seconds writing it down several times.<\/p>\n

Which words did they remember better? Yup: the words that they had drawn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This effect held up not only in a psychology lab, but also in a college lecture hall.<\/p>\n

Drawing Benefits Memory: More Advanced Studies<\/h2>\n

This hypothesis makes a kind of rough-and ready sense, for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n

For instance, it just seems plausible that drawing benefits memory because visuals<\/strong> aide memory. Or, because drawing requires a greater degree of cognitive processing<\/strong> than simply writing.<\/p>\n

So: perhaps drawing is but one example of these other effects.<\/p>\n

Wammes and Co. wanted to see if that’s true. (Remember: they’re trying to disprove<\/em> their hypothesis.)<\/p>\n

So, they repeated the study several more times. In some cases, students drew<\/em> pictures for some words and looked at<\/em> pictures of other words.<\/p>\n

Or, in another study, they drew<\/em> pictures<\/em> of some words and wrote down key features<\/em> of other words. (Writing down key features requires higher levels of processing.)<\/p>\n

In every case, they found that drawing produces even greater benefits<\/em> than each sub-strategy. Students remembered more words that they had drawn than words they had processed in all those other ways.<\/p>\n

Classroom Implications<\/h2>\n

What should classroom teachers do with this information?<\/p>\n

In the first place, keep in mind that we’re still in early days of testing this technique. Much of this research has focused on nouns that are relatively easy to draw: say, “apple.”<\/p>\n

At the same time, Wammes ran one study where students either drew<\/em> or copied verbatim<\/em> definitions of words<\/a>. For instance, “stratoscopes” are “airborne telescopes that are mounted on high altitude balloons.” Once again, drawing led to better memory than simple copying.<\/p>\n

Wammes’s team is currently exploring drawings of more abstract words: I hope to see those results published soon.<\/p>\n

With these caveats in mind, I think we can plausibly use this approach in our classrooms. If you think a word, definition, concept, or process can plausibly be drawn, give your students a change to “review by drawing.”<\/p>\n

Or, if you’ve built in a moment for retrieval practice<\/a>, encourage students to include a drawing as part of their retrieval.<\/p>\n

You might conclude that a particular topic doesn’t lend itself to drawing. An an English teacher, I’m not immediately sure how to draw “ode” or “concatenation” or “litotes.”<\/p>\n

But, if a word or concept seems drawable to you, you might give students a chance to try out this mnemonic aide.<\/p>\n

A Final Note<\/h2>\n

I emailed Dr. Wammes with a few questions about his research. In his reply, he included this quite wonderful sentence:<\/p>\n

“There certainly will be\u00a0situations\u00a0where it [drawing] doesn’t work, I just unfortunately\u00a0haven’t found them yet.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Too often, teachers can take research findings as absolute injunctions. When we learn about the 10 minute rule<\/a>, we think: “okay, I have to change it up every ten minutes!”<\/p>\n

But, that’s just not true.<\/p>\n

Psychology findings will benefits some<\/em> of our classroom situations, some<\/em> of our students, some<\/em> of our lesson plans, some<\/em> of our schools.<\/p>\n

But, almost no research finding always applies. We have to translate and adapt and tinker.<\/p>\n

The field of Mind, Brain, Education<\/em> is a partnership: teachers learn from researchers, and researchers learn from teachers.<\/p>\n

So, when you try this technique in your classroom, keep track of your results. If you pass them on to me, I’ll let the researchers know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many words is drawing a picture worth? More specifically, Jeffrey Wammes & Co. have been exploring this question: is it true that drawing benefits memory? If I draw a picture of a word, will I remember it better than if I simply wrote that word down several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,23],"class_list":["post-4169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-long-term-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4169"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4218,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions\/4218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}