Got an exam coming up? Better start sketching!

　　是不是考试即将到来了？那么最好现在开始画起来吧！

　　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 morecohesive memory as it integrates visual, motor and semantic information.

　　一项新的研究发现称：将你所要记忆的东西用画图的形式表现出来，是提高你记忆力的一种十分有效的方式。研究者相信，画画的行为可以帮助建立更牢固的记忆，因为它将视觉、动态和语义信息整合为了一体。

　　考前死记硬背记不住？画下来更有效

　　“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.

　　“我们将绘图和其他的编码方式进行了对比，但是绘图仍然是最有效的，”滑铁卢大学心理学系博士杰弗里说道。

　　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 retention6. 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.

　　他们招募了一些大学生，并且给到他们一张单子，上面写有比较简单易画的词，比如说“苹果”。参与者被要求在40秒内重复画出或者是写出这个字。然后，他们会做一个填字任务——区分音符来加强记忆力。在试验的最后一步，学生们被要求在一分钟之内回忆尽可能多的字母缩写。

　　“We discovered a significant recall advantage for words that were drawn as compared to those that were written,” said Wammes.

　　“我们发现分别通过画图和书写来记忆单词，前者有明显优势。”

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