Andrade tested her theory by playing a lengthy and boring tape of a telephone message to a collection of people only half of whom had been given a doodling task. After the tape ended she quizzed them on what they had retained and found that the doodlers remembered much more than the nondoodlers. “They remembered about 29 percent more information from the tape than the people who were just listening to the tape ” Andrade says. In other words doodling doesn t detract from concentration; it can help by diminishing the need to resort to daydreams.