right|thumb|upright=1.2|Doodle by [[Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Prussia, c. 1795]]
A doodle is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of random and abstract lines or shapes, generally without ever lifting the drawing device from the paper.
Typical examples of doodling may be found in school notebooks, often in the margins, drawn by students daydreaming or losing interest during class.
Etymology
The word doodle first appeared in the early 17th century to mean a fool or simpleton. That led to the more generalized verb "to doodle", which means to do nothing.
Effects on memory
According to a study published in the scientific journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, doodling can aid a person's memory by expending just enough energy to keep one from daydreaming, which demands a lot of the brain's processing power, as well as from not paying attention. Thus, it acts as a mediator between the spectrum of thinking too much or thinking too little and helps focus on the current situation. The study was done by Professor Jackie Andrade, of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, who reported that doodlers in her experiment recalled 7.5 pieces of information (out of 16 total) on average, 29% more than the average of 5.8 recalled by the control group made of non-doodlers. and maintaining attention.
Doodling has positive effects on human comprehension as well. Creating visual depictions of information allows for a deeper understanding of material being learned. When doodling, a person is engaging neurological pathways in ways that allow for effective and efficient sifting and processing of information. Scientists believe that doodling's stress relieving properties arise from the way that the act of doodling engages with the brain's default mode network. Doodling is often incorporated into art therapy, allowing its users to slow down, focus and de-stress.
History
thumb|upright=1|A typical page from Pushkin's manuscript
Doodling has been found on multiple archaeological artefacts at different times around the world. Examples include hand and foot prints intentionally left by children 200,000 years ago in Tibet, 1st-century drawings of stick figures and gladiators in Pompeii, and obscene drawings in the Sogdian documents from Dunhuang (9th–10th century). A young student named Onfim from 13th-century Novgorod left a variety of doodles in his school notes, written on birch bark. the poet and physician John Keats, who doodled in the margins of his medical notes; Sylvia Plath; Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam developed the Ulam spiral for visualization of prime numbers while doodling during a boring presentation at a mathematics conference.
Many American presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, have been known to doodle during meetings.
See also
- Asemic writing
- Automatic writing
- Drolleries
- Fidgeting
- Graffiti
- Graphology
- Marginalia
- Memory and retention in learning
- Mr Doodle
- Recall (memory)
- Sketch (drawing)
- Stick figure
- Stream of consciousness writing
- Ulam spiral