As I type this, my left leg is bouncing restlessly against the floor, my head keeps shifting toward the window, and I’m trying hard not to fiddle with an errant paper clip on my desk. Yes, I fidget regularly and have since I was little. Sometimes the leg bouncing or hand fiddling comes from stress or nervousness (or too much caffeine), but often it’s just a natural, subconscious action—one that others sometimes find annoying and off-putting.
Manners experts say that fidgeting is impolite, and body language experts warn that it’s the kiss of death in job interviews and first dates. I agree that fidgeting suggests anxiety or a lack of concentration; even I think that when I see people fidget, and I’m a frequent offender myself. However, what it conveys and what it actually does are two different things. In fact, the mental and physical benefits of fidgeting are so advantageous, they might make you look at toe tappers and finger drummers in a new light.
A Key to Concentration
Teachers tend to scold students who squirm and wiggle in their seats. One of my high school teachers actually told a classmate to sit on her hands for the entire period because she kept twirling her hair and tapping her pencil on the desk; he assumed that she wasn’t paying attention. But recent research has shown that such restless habits actually aid concentration. A study conducted at the UK’s University of Hertfordshire and published in a 2007 edition of Developmental Science found that kids performed better during naming tests when they gestured. Kids who weren’t allowed to gesture didn’t do as well, leading researchers to conclude that the physical movement improved recognition and speech production.
Researchers at the University of Central Florida’s Department of Psychology found a similar connection in their 2009 study involving boys between the ages of eight and twelve. They asked the twenty-three participants—twelve of whom were diagnosed with ADHD—to take working-memory tests while the researchers monitored their movements. Everyone fidgeted during the test taking, but researchers noted that the boys diagnosed with ADHD moved around significantly more than the “typically developing” ones. However, when the kids were asked to watch a movie or paint a picture, they all remained still, suggesting that the fidgeting had more to do with cognitive effort than with simply being distracted.
Because memory tests necessitate concentration, which ADHD individuals already struggle with, the researchers theorized that moving gives their brains the extra stimulation they need to perform. And since every kid tested fidgeted at least a little, that tendency isn’t limited to people with attention issues, which is what the aforementioned 2007 study indicates as well. Sometimes our brains need more arousal than usual when a task at hand is particularly taxing. Past evidence has shown that doodling, a habit not unlike fidgeting (especially when it comes to earning teachers’ ire), can improve memory, too.
