Why Squiggles and Sticking Out Tongue Help You Focus
When people are listening to a lecture or trying to solve a difficult problem, it is not uncommon for them to stick out the tip of their tongue or start scribbling. This is not a whim or a strange thing, but a good way to focus.
An excerpt from Jen Martin’s book It’s Just Me. How science explains our oddities and habits, Alpina Publisher.
Why do I stick out my tongue to focus?
The next time you see a baby who is doing something intently with his hands, follow him. Most likely, his tongue will stick out. Is it just a cute baby trait or something more?
Think about how you yourself do things that require precise movements, such as threading a needle or getting ready to send a billiard ball into a pocket. Most likely, while your tongue is sandwiched between your lips, and its tip protrudes outward. There are more muscles in the tongue than in any other part of the body, and there is every reason to believe that the habit of sticking it out to focus is not just a fad.
Don’t interfere!
A study published in 1974 looked at the habit of sticking out the tongue in young children, baby gorillas, and adults in a wide variety of countries. The scientists concluded that humans (and other primates) stick out their tongues to show they don’t want to interact with anyone right now. In the 1980s, a group of researchers considered the hypothesis that sticking out the tongue successfully signaled, “Don’t interfere!” The subjects - 50 university students - passed an individual test for reading comprehension. In front of them sat a lecturer in headphones. One page was clearly missing from the text, and all the students had to disturb the lecturer.
Since the lecturer was wearing headphones, the student had to either address him loudly or touch him on the shoulder to get his attention. If the lecturer looked focused and had his tongue hanging out, it took students, on average, almost 20 seconds to disturb him and ask for the missing page. If the lecturer had an equally focused face, but did not stick out his tongue, the students decided to address him after an average of only 7 seconds. People are more likely to disturb a mere concentrated person than a concentrated person with his tongue hanging out.
It’s all about speech
The tongue has a huge number of nerve endings, which makes it incredibly sensitive. It is responsible not only for taste sensations, but also for a detailed, constantly updated “map” of the inner surface of the mouth. You have probably noticed that your tongue, when you think, moves involuntarily, partially reproducing mentally spoken words. Language constantly transmits a lot of information to the brain. Perhaps we stick out the tongue to immobilize it and, accordingly, reduce the number of sensory signals. As a result, the brain has more resources to focus on a specific task.
It is known that the areas of the brain responsible for speech and for controlling the hands (and also the hands in general) are connected with each other. Therefore, many scientists believe that human speech developed from sign communication. In one recent study, 4-year-old right-handed children were videotaped while performing specific tasks. One of these tasks (opening a padlock with a key) required very good hand skills, another (a game that involved banging or slapping a table) was tolerable, and a third (remembering a story) required no hands at all. The scientists studied each recording to understand when the children stuck their tongue out.
When performing different tasks, all the children stuck out their tongues, sometimes more often, sometimes less often. Children were expected to stick out their tongues more when performing a difficult task like opening a padlock, but it turned out that the knock-and-clap game made them do it more often.
This is because the game is based on strict rules. It requires speed of reaction, as well as certain gestures - the basic ancient components of speech. The hypothesis can be confirmed by the fact that children most often stuck out their tongue on the right. This means that the work of the muscles of the tongue is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, in which right-handed people (especially children) usually have speech centers.
So, children cannot help sticking out their tongue when their speech centers are involved. But what about adults? Maybe adults are just too shy to do it.
Therefore, the next time you see a focused person with his tongue hanging out, treat him with understanding. Remember that the protruding tongue signals: “Do not interfere!” And then just admire the clear evidence that such a complex, vital thing as speech grew out of gestures.
Why do I draw squiggles in meetings?
Adults often draw during meetings - draw scribbles in the margins of the agenda and other papers. We try to hide this habit because we are afraid of the reaction of colleagues. What if they think of us as if we are doing all sorts of nonsense instead of listening to the speakers? In English, even the word “squiggle” itself has a negative connotation: in the 18th century, the verb to doodle meant “to deceive” or “taunt”, and in the 19th century, the word doodle was used to refer to a corrupt politician.
Drawing squiggles is not a bad habit at all
Today we know that many ideas about squiggle drawing were wrong. This is by no means a waste of time, but a great way to improve the perception of information, focus on something and focus. We rarely doodle just for the sake of drawing: no, at this time our brain is processing information.
In one of the first studies to test whether drawing squiggles could improve concentration, participants were asked to listen to a monotonous telephone message. The subjects had to “pick out” the names of the people invited to the party from a pile of verbal garbage. Half of the subjects were asked to draw something while the other half were asked to simply listen to the message. When they were asked to take a memory test that they weren’t warned about, those who scribbled remembered a third more names. Scientists believe that drawing squiggles prevented listeners from daydreaming and distracting.
Draw to remember
Forget about unpleasant surprises in the form of memory tests. If you need to remember something, try drawing it. In one study, 14-year-old children were given 850 words to read from an article about the flu virus. The text was difficult. The students knew they were going to be tested. Half of the subjects were asked to present each of the seven paragraphs of text as a schematic drawing, the rest had to simply read the text. When the teenagers were later tested, it turned out that those who drew the diagrams understood and remembered more. In another experiment, the same results were obtained, although half of the subjects, who were supposed to just read the text, were given ready-made diagrams. But it was the self-drawing of diagrams that helped the subjects to better understand and remember what they read.
In other experiments, scientists tested how easy it is to remember a sequence of words - by writing them down or making sketches. University students were given a list of words that could easily be drawn to (for example, “apple”). For each word, the students were given 40 seconds, during which they had to either write it down several times or make a drawing.
The students were then given a minute to remember as many words as possible. Students who drew remembered twice as many words as those who wrote them down. If students were given ready-made drawings, they remembered words worse: exactly the same as in the experiment described above. Even when only four seconds were allotted for drawing, subjects who drew remembered more words—the quality of the drawing did not matter.
So it doesn’t matter if we’re really good at drawing. Long live doodles!
