A new scientific study comes to prove that people who doodle during boring presentations or classes are actually 30 percent more likely to remember names of individuals and places than those who get so bored that they start daydreaming. Persons who draw insignificant sketches are, in fact, more prone to staying focused while drawing, as opposed to the others, whose minds drift. The latter category can lose focus altogether, and speakers may be required to throw a notebook or a piece of chalk at them to bring them back to life.

“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. This study suggests that in everyday life doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing,” Jackie Andrade, who is a psychology professor at the University of Plymouth, says.

The new study, which focused on the effects doodling had on 40 people listening to telephone conversations, has been published in a recent issue of the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. The participants were required to listen to 2.5 minutes of conversation on their mobile telephones. Half of them were asked to doodle, while the other half, the control group, was forbidden to do so. At the end of the time, all of them had to write down at least 8 names of people and 8 names of places they had heard, of the multitude that had been played-back.

According to Andrade, the ones who used their questionable talent to doodle had a 29 percent higher recall rate than the others. On average, they remembered approximately 7.5 names, as opposed to the 5.8 people in the other group did. This discovery may have large ramifications, especially as far as science goes. That is to say, teachers and professors could stop frowning upon this habit, and could come to see its value. Or better yet, maybe make their classes a tad more interesting.