Psychology says people who doodle while listening may sometimes retain information differently, here’s what their brain could be doing
People who doodle while listening may not necessarily be ignoring what is being said. In some situations, doodling can act as alow-demand attentional activity, especially when the main task feels boring or repetitive. However, in other cases, free-form doodling may compete for attention with the information a person is trying to absorb or remember
By Aastha Raj, Global Desk
Aug 23, 2026, 05:47:00 PM IST
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Someone is talking during a long meeting, lecture or phone call, and your hand starts moving across the page. You draw circles, flowers, boxes or meaningless patterns while continuing to listen. To another person, it may look like you have stopped paying attention. But psychology presents a more complicated picture. Research suggests that doodling can sometimes alter attention and memory, particularly during monotonous tasks, although it is not universally helpful and should not be confused with purposeful drawing. In a well-known experiment by psychologist Jackie Andrade, participants who shaded shapes while listening to a dull telephone message later recalled about 29% more information than participants who simply listened.
Psychology Says Doodling May Keep a Bored Brain From Wandering
The first explanation involves mind-wandering. When a task is repetitive or unstimulating, attention can drift toward unrelated thoughts. You may technically still be sitting in a meeting while mentally planning dinner, remembering something from yesterday or imagining your weekend.Andrade proposed that a simple, repetitive doodling activity might occupy enough spare attentional capacity to reduce this kind of daydreaming without substantially interfering with listening. In her experiment, the doodling group performed better on the monitoring task and subsequently recalled more information.That does not mean doodling magically improves memory. It may mean that, under certain boring conditions, a small amount of activity can be less disruptive than allowing attention to wander completely.
The Psychology of Attention Helps Explain the Effect
Attention is limited. When the brain has to process several demanding activities simultaneously, performance can suffer. But not every secondary activity places the same demand on cognition.Simple, repetitive movements may require relatively little conscious monitoring. Complex sketching, writing detailed notes or creating elaborate drawings requires considerably more attention.This distinction is important because Andrade’s experiment used shading simple printed shapes, rather than asking participants to create elaborate illustrations.So someone absent-mindedly filling a page with repetitive shapes while listening may be doing something quite different from someone concentrating on drawing a detailed picture.
Psychology Says Doodling and Drawing Are Not the Same Thing
This is where popular claims about doodling need some caution. A 2019 study by Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade and Myra Fernandes directly compared doodling, drawing and writing while people listened to information. The researchers found that free-form doodling produced poorer subsequent recall than drawing or writing. Structured doodling, such as shading geometric shapes, produced recall similar to writing rather than a special memory advantage.That finding complicates the idea that all doodling helps memory. Purposeful drawing can be cognitively different because it may require people to transform information into a visual representation.
Why Drawing Can Strengthen Memory Through Elaborative Encoding
Psychologists have long studied elaborative encoding, the idea that information becomes easier to remember when we process it meaningfully and connect it with additional representations.Research by Wammes, Meade and Fernandes found that drawing information during encoding can produce substantial memory benefits, with the researchers arguing that elaborative processing contributes to the effect.For example, imagine hearing the word “apple” and simply doodling random spirals. That is different from drawing an apple. The second activity creates a meaningful visual and motor representation connected to the word.This is why purposeful drawing should not automatically be treated as the same psychological behavior as casual doodling.
Psychology Says the Type of Doodling Matters
Consider two people sitting through a long presentation. The first repeatedly shades small geometric shapes while listening. The second draws a detailed landscape, adding people, buildings and scenery.Although both could be described as “doodling,” their cognitive demands may be very different. The first activity is repetitive and relatively predictable. The second requires planning, visual decisions and sustained attention.Research increasingly suggests that doodling style, task difficulty and boredom can interact, rather than producing one universal effect on memory. A 2026 study found that unstructured doodling could impair recall, particularly under high-boredom conditions, while greater drawing complexity was also associated with poorer recall.
The Interesting Role of Boredom
Boredom may be one of the missing pieces. When information is engaging, additional activity may be unnecessary. But when someone is listening to an extremely monotonous presentation, their attention may become vulnerable to unrelated thoughts.This is why Andrade’s findings were particularly interesting: her experiment involved a deliberately dull telephone message. Participants who shaded shapes while listening recalled 29% more information on the surprise memory test.The implication was not that people should doodle during every important conversation. Instead, the simple activity may have helped prevent attention from drifting during an unstimulating task.
Psychology Says Doodling May Affect Attention Before It Affects Memory
Memory begins withencoding. If information never receives enough attention, there is less information available to remember later. That makes attention an important link between doodling and recall.A person who doodles while listening may appear distracted from the outside, yet if the movement helps them remain engaged with the speaker’s words, their actual encoding of the information could sometimes be different from what an observer expects.However, newer research provides an important counterpoint. A 2023 study found that doodling did not reduce boredom or mind-wandering or improve attention and retention compared with other conditions; participants performed best when concentrating on note-taking.
Why Doodling Should Not Be Called a Memory Hack
The strongest conclusion is therefore a cautious one. Doodling may help some people remain engaged during monotonous listening, but the evidence does not establish it as a general memory-enhancement technique.The nature of the task matters. The kind of doodling matters. The person’s attention matters. And whether the activity is simple or cognitively demanding matters.The original Andrade study was small, involving 40 participants, and its findings should not be generalized to every learning situation.
The Psychology Behind Doodling While Listening
The most intriguing lesson from psychology is that attention is not always as visually obvious as it appears. Someone staring directly at a speaker may be mentally elsewhere.Someone absent-mindedly drawing circles may actually be listening. But whether those scribbles help, hurt or make no difference depends on what the brain is being asked to do at the same time.
FAQs
Does doodling help people remember what they hear?
Sometimes, but the evidence is mixed. Andrade found better monitoring and recall among participants who shaded shapes during a monotonous listening task, while later research found that free-form doodling could actually reduce recall.
Why might doodling help attention?
One explanation is that a simple repetitive activity may reduce mind-wandering during a boring task without consuming enough cognitive resources to seriously interfere with listening. This was one interpretation proposed from Andrade’s findings.
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