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While you’re meeting with co-workers around a table, it’s hard to ignore their hands flowing across a piece of paper in front of them.

What are they doing? Taking notes, writing a to-do list, drawing a skull and crossbones? Those scribbles and squiggles often are doodles.

Just about everyone has doodled at some point.

{%pl-4777201%} Pen or pencil meets paper when a phone conversation has droned on too long, a television program fails to hold your attention or a class lecture inspires imagery — or you’re stuck in a lengthy meeting.

And doodles take many forms: stick figures; simple shapes like stars, cubes or hearts; faces; a repeated pattern of symbols. The differences are as varied as those creating them.

Why does a person doodle? Do doodle shapes have meanings? Is it psychologically revealing? Professional opinions have swung from a belief that people who doodle might be simpletons to a sign that a person is creative, perhaps quite intelligent.

Bend trauma counselor Michele Freeman, who uses doodling as therapy, said it “activates the visual, kinesthetic, auditory and linguistic learning styles. When you activate more than one part of the brain at a time, it makes you smarter.”

A negative theory about doodling is it means a person is not paying attention. New research has shown it actually might lead to better recall.

“It allows us to focus, find answers and be more creative,” Freeman said. “Sometimes people will look at the doodle and remember what they were listening to.”

When 40 study participants listened to a phone message for the names of party guests with half of them doodling shapes and the other half told to just listen, the doodlers remembered more. In fact, the doodling group recalled 29 percent more information on a surprise memory test, according to a study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.

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“Doodling is like driving along and your mind drifts off into something else entirely, but you still get where you’re going,” Freeman said. The Bend counselor added, using doodling for therapy “heals people; part of the process is getting out a problem that maybe you don’t have words for.”

Bend woman Mary Kay Root doodles while sitting in front of the television. The result is large, elaborate designs.

“It’s a discipline almost. If I’m on the phone and I don’t have a doodle I’m building on I practice a pattern over and over,” Root said. “It’s relaxing, soothing. If it’s not fun, I don’t do it. It’s not meditation, but it comes close for me.” •

Subconscious secrets

Sigmund Freud believed doodles offered a hidden message about a person, a window into the psyche. For example, a doodler drawing trees might be preoccupied with life and growth.

Doodles defined: “There are some things that fall into being true about doodle shapes, like dream interpretation, there are some consistencies,” Freeman said. “Sometimes how we interpret the drawing might say more about us than the other person.”

Freeman added, “If a person is not artistic, they are going to draw what’s easiest. The time frame matters too.”

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Interpretations

Elaborate doodles: Sign of a very creative, intelligent person. Ambitious. It could also be a sign of a controlling person.

Stick figures: Indicate success, ambition, in control of emotions and focused on goals.

Hearts: Drawing hearts is equated with love.

Faces: Expressions on the face usually reveal an emotion.

Stars: A star shape can mean a person is optimistic.

Flowers: Doodles of happy, perky flowers can be a sign of an amicable person, an expression of femininity and indication of being highly social. A droopy flower can mean worry, distress or burden.

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Additional source: Ruth Rostron, professional handwriting analyst and vice chair of the British Institute of Graphologists

Definition of a doodle:Subconscious sketches.