From Our Neurons to Yours From doodles to Descartes: sketching and the human cognitive toolkit | Judith Fan
Oct 2, 2025
Judith Fan, an Assistant Professor at Stanford's Department of Psychology, explores the cognitive power of drawing. She discusses how visual representation deepens our understanding and communication of ideas, even before written language. Judith shares insights from her studies on how people develop common visual languages through drawing and how sketching enhances memory and perception. She emphasizes that drawing is not just for art but a powerful tool for learning and sharing knowledge across various fields.
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Drawing As A Cognitive Integrator
- Drawing turns semantic knowledge into durable, shareable visual representations that extend thought.
- Sketching coordinates perception, memory, planning, and motor control to communicate ideas.
Pictionary Experiment Reveals Strategy Shift
- In a Pictionary-style online experiment, strangers paired as sketcher and viewer drew chairs to identify one specific target among similar items.
- Sketchers simplified and refined strokes over repeated trials, keeping features that succeeded and dropping those that failed.
Shared Visual Languages Emerge Quickly
- Pairs develop a shared visual shorthand through interaction history without prior agreement or speech.
- Visual communication adapts socially: effective marks persist and get simplified.