Drawing improves memory

From visions to explanations: sketches do help to clarify, too.

 

 

 

 

 

Positive and negative words are best being kept in your memory, if you don´t write them down, but draw. Why is that so? Because of 3 reasons: 1. Drawing as such is a perfect mnemo technique due to the movements of your hand, 2. Emotions do produce a stronger footprint in your mind than neutral or emotionless information and 3. the combination of both stands for another quantum leap when it comes to memorizing or remember something.

These are the cristalclear insights after a couple of experiments two Canadian psychologists from the University of Waterloo have gotten to. The researchers recommend therefore to ordinary people to use a sort of sketch diary for everyday life. And forensics they tell to let witnesses draw pretty quickly whatever they might have seen of any criminal act. Don´t trust spoken testimonies alone, is their message.

Tran/Fernandes, “Drawing Enhances Memory for Emotional Words”, in: Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology”, 2023, vol. 77, nr. 4, 296-307.

 

 

From the practise:

I am a fan of the drawn word. For years I motivate clients to better draw their vision than to put down some bullet points in the first place. By drawing your real intentions, your wishes, your fantasies are surfacing perfectly.

Additionally drawing is a brillant technique, though, for questioning the conclusiveness and the understanding of explanations. According to the motto: what you cannot draw, you cannot explain, too, I am advising all clients to draw their argument first – particularly when preparing a speech or a presentation. Whether you draw a process chart or a press graphic or a big emotional picture – this is a matter of taste. In any case you are not only doublechecking if your explanation hits the point, you very often are also getting metaphors by the drawing. And so a sketch creates spoken pictures which as metaphors return to your rhetoric.