Need to remember something? Better draw it, study finds
研究发现：要记住东西，先画下来
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have found that drawing pictures of information that needs to be remembered is a strong and reliable strategy to enhance memory.
滑铁卢大学的研究者发现，把记忆的信息画成图画可是一种有力而又可靠谱的记忆手段。
"We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always came out on top," said the study's lead author, Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. "We believe that the benefit arises because drawing helps to create a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor and semantic information."
“我们将画画与其他已知的记忆编码手段做了对比，画画总是能胜出，” Jeffrey Wammes（研究组的带头人、心理学系的博士生）说，“我们相信画画具有优势，因为画画把视觉、运动神经、语义信息结合起来，创造出完整的记忆痕迹。
The study, by Wammes, along with fellow PhD candidate Melissa Meade and Professor Myra Fernandes, presented student participants with a list of simple, easily drawn words, suchas "apple." The students were given 40 seconds to either draw the word, or write it out repeatedly. They were then given a filler task of classifying musical tones to facilitate the retention process. Finally, the researchers asked students to freely recall as many words as possible from the initial listin just 60 seconds.
Wammes带领博士生Melissa Meade和Myra Fernandes教授给参与研究的学生一个单词列表，这些单词很容易画出来，比如“苹果”。学生有40秒的时间，可以选择画出单词，也可以选择重复的写单词，接着让他们填写一个给乐音分类的表格以促进记忆进程。最后，研究者让他们在60秒内尽可能地回忆那个单词列表的内容。
The study appeared in the the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
研究刊登在《实验心理学》季刊上。
"We discovered a significant recall advantage for words that were drawn as compared to those that were written," said Wammes. "Participants often recalled more than twice as many drawn than written words. We labelled this benefit 'the drawing effect,' which refers to this distinct advantage of drawing words relative to writing them out."
“我们发现，画下来的词比写出来的词记忆优势更明显，“Wammes说，”参与者记住画出来的单词量是记住写出来单词量的两倍。我们把这个明显的优势称为‘图画效应’。”
In variations of the experiment in which students drew the words repeatedly, or added visual details to the written letters, such as shading or other doodles, the results remained unchanged. Memory for drawn words was superior to all other alternatives. Drawing led to better later memory performance than listing physical characteristics, creating mental images, and viewing pictures of the objects depicted by the words.
实验中虽然有些变量，比如学生重复去画一个词、给单词添加阴影、涂鸦效果，但实验结果还是不变。画图记忆好于其他方法，并且后期记忆的表现优于特性列表法，意象法，实物对照法。
"Importantly, the quality of the drawings people made did not seem to matter, suggesting that everyone could benefit from this memory strategy, regardless of their artistic talent. In line with this, we showed that people still gained a huge advantage in later memory, even when they had just 4 seconds to draw their picture," said Wammes.
“重点是，图画的质量并不重要，所以任何人都能通过画画来改善记忆，无论你是否有艺术天赋。与之相符的是，人们从后期记忆中展现了优势，即便只有4秒的画图时间。“Wammes说。
While the drawing effect proved reliable in testing, the experiments were conducted with single words only. Wammes and his team are currently trying to determine why this memory benefit is so potent, and how widely it can be applied to other types of information.
虽然画画在试验中被证明是可靠的，但实验使用的只是单个的词。Wammes和他的团队正尝试研究这种记忆法如此强效的原因和它在多大程度上可用于其他信息类型的记忆。
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