Doodling as a Lecture-Break Intervention

University lectures often feature mind-wandering and distracted students. Doodling has been proposed to alleviate fatigue and aid memory, yet empirical evidence on doodling during lecture micro-breaks remains limited. This study examined how common break activities—social media scrolling, doodling, passive sitting, and note summarizing—affect content recall, mind-wandering, cognitive load, and fatigue. Participants (N = 151) watched a recorded lecture, took notes, and completed condition-specific micro-break activities at regular intervals. Contrary to prior research, doodling significantly impaired content recall relative to other conditions, and brief social media scrolling had neutral effects. The doodling group reported lower germane cognitive load. Mediation analyses suggest the novelty of doodling interfered with learning. These findings indicate that novel micro-break may disrupt learning by diverting cognitive resources away from schema formation.