The simple trick that can dramatically boost your memory: Scientists say DRAWING what you want to remember is key

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Some people use mnemonics or songs to remember things, but experts have another trick.

Researchers found that simply drawing pictures of what you need to remember will help you recall twice as much information, compared to just writing the words out.

Using this technique 'creates a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor and semantic information,' they say.

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Researcher found that drawing pictures of what you need to remember will help you recall twice as much information, compared to just writing the words out. Using this technique 'creates a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor and semantic information'

'We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always came out on top,' said Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo. 

The researchers explain that the process of drawing words entails at least four components to boost memory: elaboration, visual imagery, motor action and pictorial representation.

In order to transfer a word into a drawn visual representation, we first create some physical characteristics of the item (elaboration), create a visual image of the item (visual imagery), engage in the actual hand movements needed for drawing (motor action). 

Wammes and his team gave a group of student participants a list of simple, easy to draw words like 'pear' or 'balloon'.

The subjects were given 40 seconds to either draw the words or write them repeatedly.

Once completed, they were given a filler task of classifying musical tones to facilitate the retention process.

Researchers then asked students to recall as many words as possible from the list in 60 seconds.

And this is when they discovered 'a significant recall advantage' by drawing instead of writing.

'Participants often recalled more than twice as many drawn than written words,' said Wammes.

'We labelled this benefit 'the drawing effect,' which refers to this distinct advantage of drawing words relative to writing them out.'

In variations of the experiment in which students drew the words repeatedly, or added visual details to the written letters, such as shading or other doodles, the results remained unchanged.

'Participants often recalled more than twice as many drawn than written words,' said Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.  'We labelled this benefit 'the drawing effect,' which refers to this distinct advantage of drawing words relative to writing them out'

Wammes and his team gave a group of student participants a list of simple, easy to draw words like 'pear' or 'balloon'. The subjects were given 40 seconds to either draw the words or write them repeatedly. Researchers then asked the students to recall as many words as possible from the list in 60 seconds

Memory for drawn words was superior to all other alternatives, said researchers.

The study also proved that drawing led to better later memory performance than listing physical characteristics, creating mental images and viewing pictures of the objects depicted by the words.

'Importantly, the quality of the drawings people made did not seem to matter, suggesting that everyone could benefit from this memory strategy, regardless of their artistic talent,' said Wammes.

'In line with this, we showed that people still gained a huge advantage in later memory, even when they had just 4 seconds to draw their picture,'