Ink 2 Better Think: Sketchnoting for Boosting Executive Function (Neurodiverse)

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Let's face it: Doodling, aka 'mindless drawing' gets an undeserved bad reputation. You may have been scolded for doodling in class (It was 2nd grade for me). However, what was once (and sometimes still) seen as a waste of time and a failure to pay attention has been shown to do the opposite. It's a  whole movement called Sketchnoting, a term coined by Mike Rohde in 2006. But humans have been doodling for tens of thousands of years- by the oldest estimate 73,000 years.

Anything that humans have been doing from antiquity onwards, there's something powerful going on," says Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution. "This behaviour is universal, it's across cultures and across economic groups. It's like breathing or singing or dancing and is natural to human beings."

Famous authors (Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, JRR Tolkein, Lewis Carroll), heads of state (Queen Victoria, Presidents Eisenhower and Obama, Churchill) and genius inventors (Steve Jobs, Alexander Graham Bell), as well as a myriad of professional artists (Joan Miro, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, Picasso, Monet and Da Vinci) were lifelong avid doodlers.

One of the greatest myths is that it is only for people with natural artistic ability. But it's not about the art, it's about the IDEA. It's content-driven and a valuable communication and thinking tool.
Drawing supports communication, and communication is power. So often kids, especially those on the Spectrum get emotionally overloaded because they don't know how to express themselves or advocate for their needs. And many are also very visual thinkers as Temple Grandin, Ph.D., a prominent autistic author and speaker described this as Thinking in Pictures, which is also the title of her book.

In essence it's about transforming ideas and comprehension into visual communication.
In Psychology, the "picture superiority effect" means that people remember visuals over words. Visuals are tangible and more easily retained. In other words, it facilitates attentive listening so that ideas are visually synthesized and summarized through writing, drawing, and symbols. These visual notes  communicate to our brain and promote better understanding and memory. This is becaude emotions are tightly connected with pictures.