Keep finding your keys in the fridge and can't for the life of you remember the names of all the mums on the school run?
We feel you. It seems baby brain has a tendency to linger once you have kids (and are above the age of 25...)
We got some good news, though, in the form of a little trick that might just help you remember things that little bit better.
In a
study published in the
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers at the University of Waterloo found that drawing is an
incredibly effective way to enhance a person’s ability to remember information. As in draw things down, don't write them.
During the study, researchers gave student participants a list of easily drawn words, like “apple.” The students had 40 seconds to either draw the word or write it out repeatedly.
They were then asked to classify musical tones during an interim period as a distraction. Once they were finished, the students were asked to recall as many words from the original list as possible in one minute. The students who drew their words instead of writing them had a “significant recall advantage,” according to research team lead
Jeffrey Wammes.
In fact, the “drawing effect” outperformed many other memory retention devices like writing words, doodling in conjunction with writing words, looking at photographs of the objects, listing physical characteristics or creating mental images.
Guess it’s time to pick up those crayons again.
