Investigating the Effect of Drawing Medium on Learning

This study aimed to scrutinize the impact of drawing medium on learning. Results from three experiments demonstrated that, when acquiring actual concepts, participants in the finger drawing condition exhibited better definition retention compared to those in the pencil drawing and stylus drawing conditions. When engaging with fictitious concepts, the superiority of the finger drawing condition in definition retention persisted over the other conditions. However, the advantage of finger drawing in definition retention was attenuated due to lower prior knowledge for fictitious materials. Experiment 1 found that term source memory and learning motivation were higher for finger drawing compared to pencil drawing, but these findings were not replicated in Experiments 2 and 3. Furthermore, Experiment 3 revealed that stylus drawing resulted in superior term source memory and learning motivation compared to finger drawing. This study underscores the presence of a drawing medium effect and suggests the significance of prior knowledge.