We have looked at the benefits of combining text and visuals for memory and learning – see dual coding – in many previous posts. A new series of experiments has investigated the effects of drawing specifically and whether drawing improves memory for the to-be-learned material compared to other strategies (1). The research is so new that it is currently only available as a preprint and in the process of being submitted for publication. The upside of this is that the paper is already available publicly and that you can provide the authors with feedback on it. The researchers wanted to test whether drawing increases memory performance more than writing or mental imagery. In three experiments they pitched different conditions against each other to explore this topic.
