Doodling and fidgeting-traditionally viewed in educational contexts as markers of inattention and poor classroom behaviour-have more recently been considered as possible routes to improve performance by reducing boredom and its negative impact on memory. However, there is a surprising lack of well-controlled studies examining this possibility, despite the widespread adoption of fidget toys and doodling exercises within classroom settings. Here we report two experiments (total N = 222) that assess the impact of doodling on boredom, attention, mind-wandering, and subsequent recall of auditory information. In Experiment 1, participants first listened to a 15-min section of a lecture known to induce boredom. Immediately thereafter they were asked to jot down important information from a short voicemail that they listened to while either doodling (adding shading to shapes) or doing nothing in between note-taking. In Experiment 2, participants listened to a 45-min section of the same lecture under one of four conditions: structured doodling (i.e., shade in shapes), unstructured doodling, note-taking, or listen-only. Thought probes assessed self-perceived levels of state boredom, mind-wandering, and attention throughout the lecture. Across studies, doodling neither reduced boredom or mind-wandering nor increased attention or retention of information compared with other conditions. In contrast, attention and test performance were highest (and boredom and mind-wandering lowest) for those focused solely on note-taking.
Keywords: Boredom; attention; doodling; fidgeting; memory; mind-wandering.