THE BENEFIT OF DRAWING FOR LEARNING VISUAL MATERIALS

Many academic fields, such as botany and anatomy, place considerable emphasis on learning visual materials. In order to support the learning process in these fields, it is important to know what study strategies are optimal for subsequent memory of visual content. Prior work has shown that drawing is beneficial for learning, but most studies use verbal materials and the drawing advantage is often attributed to creating a secondary representation (visual). When learning visual content, describing would create a secondary representation (verbal). This study investigated the relative benefits of drawing and describing for learning visual materials. Participants were undergraduate students. We had 80 participants in Experiment 1 and 111 participants in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, participants learned object images through drawing, describing, or viewing and then had an old/new recognition task to test their overall object memory. In Experiment 2, participants learned images through drawing, describing, tracing, or viewing and then had a three-alternative-forced-choice task to test detailed aspects of their object memory. In Experiment 1, drawing and describing led to considerably better memory compared to simply viewing, with a slight benefit of describing over drawing. In Experiment 2, drawing, describing, and tracing led to considerably better memory than viewing, with drawing leading to superior memory compared to describing. Both drawing and describing are excellent strategies for learners to implement when studying visual materials. If the goal is to learn detailed aspects of the visual content, drawing is superior to describing.