考前死記硬背記不住？畫下來更有效

Got an exam coming up? Better start sketching!
是不是考試即將到來了？那麼最好現在開始畫起來吧！

A new study found that drawing information you need to remember is a very efficient way to enhance your memory. The researchers believe that the act of drawing helps create a more cohesive memory as it integrates visual, motor and semantic information.
一項新的研究發現稱：將你所要記憶的東西用畫圖的形式表現出來，是提高你記憶力的一種十分有效的方式。研究者相信，畫畫的行爲可以幫助建立更牢固的記憶，因爲它將視覺、動態和語義信息整合爲了一體。

“We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always came out on top,” said Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.
“我們將繪圖和其他的編碼方式進行了對比，但是繪圖仍然是最有效的，”滑鐵盧大學心理學系博士傑弗裏說道。

Together, they enlisted some of the University’s students’ help and presented them with a list of simple, easily drawn words, such as “apple.” Participants were given 40 seconds in which to draw or write out the the word repeatedly. After this, they were given a filler task of classifying musical tones, to facilitate memory retention. In the last step of the trial, the students were asked to recall as many of the initial words as they could in just 60 seconds.
他們招募了一些大學生，並且給到他們一張單子，上面寫有比較簡單易畫的詞，比如說“蘋果”。參與者被要求在40秒內重複畫出或者是寫出這個字。然後，他們會做一個填字任務——區分音符來加強記憶力。在試驗的最後一步，學生們被要求在一分鐘之內回憶儘可能多的字母縮寫。

“We discovered a significant recall advantage for words that were drawn as compared to those that were written,” said Wammes.
“我們發現分別通過畫圖和書寫來記憶單詞，前者有明顯優勢。”