Drawing and memory: Using visual production to alleviate concreteness effects

Age differences in effectiveness of encoding techniques on memory

We compared the effectiveness of different encoding techniques across the adult age range. Three hundred participants: 100 younger, 100 middle-aged, and 100 older adults, were asked to encode a set of visually presented concrete and abstract words. Participants were shown target words one at a time, along with prompts (randomly and intermixed, within-subject) to either silently read, read aloud, write, or draw a picture of the target, for a duration of 10-seconds each. On a later free recall test, participants were given 2-minutes to type all the words they could remember from the encoding phase. Across age groups, we showed that drawing, writing, and reading aloud as encoding techniques yielded better memory than silently reading words, with drawing leading to the largest boost. While memory performance did decrease as age increased, it interacted with the encoding technique. Of note, there were no differences in memory performance in middle-aged compared to young adults. Importantly, age differences in memory emerged only when drawing was used as the encoding strategy, in line with previously reported age-related deficits in generating imagery, or integrating it with motoric processes. Despite this, concrete relative to abstract words that were drawn or written during encoding were better retained, regardless of age, suggesting these techniques facilitate formation of age-invariant visuo-spatial representations. Our findings suggest that whether age differences in memory emerge depends on the strategy used at encoding, and the type of information being encoded.

Drawing as an efficient encoding tool in younger but not always older adults: The case of associative memory

Episodic memory strongly declines in healthy aging, at least partly because of reduced abilities to create and remember associations (associative memory) and to use efficient memory strategies. Several studies have shown that drawing the to-be-remembered material is a reliable encoding tool to enhance memory of individual items (item memory) because it simultaneously integrates elaborative, pictorial, and motoric processes. These processes in isolation can enhance associative memory in older adults. Nevertheless, their simultaneous impact on associative memory has never been investigated in drawing as an encoding tool. We aimed to investigate whether drawing as an encoding tool not only enhances item memory, but whether its benefit extends to associative memory in younger and older adults. Therefore, we tested 101 older and 100 younger participants in two online experiments and one in-person experiment. Using a memory task for unrelated word-pairs, we compared relational drawing and repeatedly writing (non-relational) as encoding tools and assessed immediate recognition memory of items and associations. In Experiment 2, we additionally assessed recognition memory after 1 week. The findings were consistent across the three experiments: while younger participants benefited from drawing over writing in item and associative memory, older participants benefited in item but not in associative memory. The observed effects remained after 1 week. Thus, we could extend the benefit of drawing to relational drawing in associative memory in younger adults. The lack of benefit in older adults' associative memory might be explained by age-related difficulties in benefiting from memory strategies, and in creating and retrieving associations.

Reading text aloud benefits memory but not comprehension

The production effect-that reading aloud leads to better memory than does reading silently-has been defined narrowly with reference to memory; it has been explored largely using word lists as the material to be read and remembered. But might the benefit of production extend beyond memory and beyond individual words? In a series of four experiments, passages from reading comprehension tests served as the study material. Participants read some passages aloud and others silently. After each passage, they completed multiple-choice questions about that passage. Separating the multiple-choice questions into memory-focused versus comprehension-focused questions, we observed a consistent production benefit only for the memory-focused questions. Production clearly improves memory for text, not just for individual words, and also extends to multiple-choice testing. The overall pattern of findings fits with the distinctiveness account of production-that information read aloud stands out at study and at test from information read silently. Only when the tested information is a very close match to the studied information, as is the case for memory questions but not for comprehension questions, does production improve accuracy.

Symbol superiority: Why $ is better remembered than 'dollar'

Memory typically is better for information presented in picture format than in word format. Dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1969) proposes that this is because pictures are spontaneously labelled, leading to the creation of two representational codes-image and verbal-whereas words often lead to only a single (verbal) code. With this perspective as motivation, the present investigation asked whether common graphic symbols (e.g.,!@#$%&) are afforded primarily verbal coding, akin to words, or whether they also invoke visual imagery, as do pictures. Across four experiments, participants were presented at study with graphic symbols or words (e.g., $ or 'dollar'). In Experiment 1, memory was assessed using free recall; in Experiment 2, memory was assessed using old-new recognition. In Experiment 3, the word set was restricted to a single category. In Experiment 4, memory for graphic symbols, pictures, and words was directly compared. All four experiments demonstrated a memory benefit for symbols relative to words. In a fifth experiment, machine learning estimations of inherent stimulus memorability were found to predict memory performance in the earlier experiments. This study is the first to present evidence that, like pictures, graphic symbols are better remembered than words, in line with dual-coding theory and with a distinctiveness account. We reason that symbols offer a visual referent for abstract concepts that are otherwise unlikely to be spontaneously imaged.

A tutorial on capturing mental representations through drawing and crowd-sourced scoring

When we draw, we are depicting a rich mental representation reflecting a memory, percept, schema, imagination, or feeling. In spite of the abundance of data created by drawings, drawings are rarely used as an output measure in the field of psychology, due to concerns about their large variance and their difficulty of quantification. However, recent work leveraging pen-tracking, computer vision, and online crowd-sourcing has revealed new ways to capture and objectively quantify drawings, to answer a wide range of questions across fields of psychology. Here, I present a tutorial on modern methods for drawing experiments, ranging from how to quantify pen-and-paper type studies, up to how to administer a fully closed-loop online experiment. I go through the concrete steps of designing a drawing experiment, recording drawings, and objectively quantifying them through online crowd-sourcing and computer vision methods. Included with this tutorial are code examples at different levels of complexity and tutorials designed to teach basic lessons about web architecture and be useful regardless of skill level. I also discuss key methodological points of consideration, and provide a series of potential jumping points for drawing studies across fields in psychology. I hope this tutorial will arm more researchers with the skills to capture these naturalistic snapshots of a mental image.