On the surface, it looks like you are wasting time and not paying attention – you have been caught doodling. To many, this act is seen as nothing more than a time waster to fight boredom, like playing Angry Birds during a meeting. However, current science could be turning this belief on its head. Before heaping praise of doodlers and revolutionising meetings forever, let us turn our attention to the word doodle itself.
Though we may associate it most with drawings on paper, and Google Doodles, our word initially had quite a different meaning. Originating from the Low German Dudeltopf, the initial meaning of the word was for a fool or a simpleton, such as in the well-known song, Yankee Doodle, sung by British loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. What allowed for the meaning to move from defining a person to defining artistic scribbling was the widely-held belief that these little drawings were nothing more than aimless time wasting or procrastination, which were considered to be the actions of a fool.
Contrary to belief about doodles, there may be more to them than previously thought. According to a 2009 study conducted by Plymouth University, participants who doodled during an experiment retained an average of 29% more information than non-doodlers. Adding to this, a 2011 article from Science demonstrated that, when drawing/utilising visuals instead of strictly using words, people obtained a better understanding of a particular concept and were also better able to communicate it. Finally, it seems as the doodles themselves have a hidden meaning: if someone tends to doodle small straight lines, graphologists say they are likely to be shy and practical; conversely, someone who doodles large, rounded shapes and curved lines is more likely to be emotional, confident, and outgoing.
Definition of doodle
The first known use of the word doodle in English comes from John Ford’s 1629 play, The Lover’s Melancholy, where he writes, “Vanish, Doodles, Vanish,” using the definition of a silly or foolish person. For our modern understanding of the word, the first to use and, indeed, define the word was Russell Arundel, who, in his 1937 book of doodles defined the word as: “A ‘doodle’ is a scribbling or sketch made while the conscious mind is concerned with matters wholely unrelated to the scribbling.” Understanding that these were more than just idle scribbles, Helen Gardner, writing 2 decades after Arundel in The Limits of Literary Criticism, stated that, “When a writer’s first drafts, scraps of memoranda, and ‘doodles’ have been preserved, we may possibly have a limited success in tracing the workings of the creative imagination.” Interestingly, though Gardner wrote this almost 60 years ago, we are discovering how true it is, but not just for writers.
