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Doodle the mindscapes

Photo: M. Govarthan

Doodle on Allow the child to create and shape a reality

Every time he scribbles on his notebook while the class is on, he gets a whack. Squiggles, wiggles, circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, dots, angles, , spirals, steeples, spires and shapes straight out of Dr. Suess; shapeless nebulae, the bizarre, surreal, unreal and hyper real — they are everywhere — in his notebooks, on the top of his textbooks, on the margins, the back pages, on the wooden desk in front of him…

That’s Kiran Kumar’s mind for you — on canvas. “I love it, just going on drawing,” he says, smiling. Which teacher has not punished such a child? Which manager has not stared down the guy who, in the middle of an awfully boring power point presentation, draws something totally out of context on his notepad?

And, now a study says that doodlers — those who revel thinking in images — are one up when it comes to recalling things. In a study, psychologist Jackie Andrade from the University of Plymouth, U.K., told volunteers to listen to a monotonous telephone message and write down the names of people who were invited to a party. Half of them were told to listen to the taped message while colouring over printed shapes. The other half of them ware told to just listen.

At the end of it, the two groups had a surprise recall test — the doodlers had a better recall, mentioning more partygoers’ names and other pieces of information, than the non-doodlers. The study, published in “Applied Cognitive Psychology” talks about the virtues a simple task such as doodling has on structuring the auditory input visually and on memory.

She says of students doodling in classrooms: “Doodling can be a good thing. If there’s a choice between doodling and daydreaming, you’re better off if your students are doodling. Of course, it’s best if you aren’t boring them at all, but doodling isn’t necessarily a sign of your students being naughty — it’s a sign that it may be hard for them to concentrate without something visual.”

Doodling can help people see their understanding visually right there on a sheet of paper. Which is why they have more chance of connecting to and participating in the class or lecture.

For an outsider, the whole thing smacks of being inattentive. But, for a doodler, it’s a construction of meaning and understanding.

So, next time you find your kid doodling — caricatures of teachers, of birds and animals, irregular forms, lines and what not — remember he / she is creating and shaping a reality.

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