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Relearn Faster and Retain Longer: Along With Practice, Sleep Makes Perfect
Abstract
Both repeated practice and sleep improve long-term retention of information. The assumed common mechanism underlying these effects is memory reactivation, either on-line and effortful or off-line and effortless. In the study reported here, we investigated whether sleep-dependent memory consolidation could help to save practice time during relearning. During two sessions occurring 12 hr apart, 40 participants practiced foreign vocabulary until they reached a perfect level of performance. Half of them learned in the morning and relearned in the evening of a single day. The other half learned in the evening of one day, slept, and then relearned in the morning of the next day. Their retention was assessed 1 week later and 6 months later. We found that interleaving sleep between learning sessions not only reduced the amount of practice needed by half but also ensured much better long-term retention. Sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but sleeping between two learning sessions is a better strategy.
... Consolidation has been the focus of a great deal of research, particularly with regard to processes during sleep that may optimize memory networks for long-term storage. It has been consistently shown that a period of sleep after learning results in better recall than when learning is followed by an equivalent period of wakefulness [1][2][3][4][5][6]. This sleep benefit is thought to occur through at least three different mechanisms. ...
... A handful of recent studies introduced a further learning and test session after sleep to examine whether sleep shapes new memories in a way that enhances subsequent relearning of the same material [1,4,18]. The first of these studies assessed memory for 20 Swahili-English paired associates encoded during an initial learning session and a subsequent relearning session 12 h later [1]. ...
... In sum, this study replicated the well-established benefit of sleep for memory consolidation [5], but found no evidence that sleep affects relearning. Mazza and colleagues used a similar design assessing memory for 16 Swahili-French paired associates after a 12 h interval including sleep or wakefulness [4]. They observed a sleep advantage for the initial test after the retention interval, while the sleep group also required significantly fewer trials to reach 100% correct recall during the relearning session. ...
Study objectives:
Sleep strengthens and reorganizes declarative memories, but the extent to which these processes benefit subsequent relearning of the same material remains unknown. It is also unclear whether sleep-memory effects translate to educationally realistic learning tasks and improve long-term learning outcomes.
Methods:
Young adults learned factual knowledge in two learning sessions that were 12 hours apart and separated by either nocturnal sleep (n=26) or daytime wakefulness (n=26). Memory before and after the retention interval was compared to assess the effect of sleep on consolidation, while memory before and after the second learning session was compared to assess relearning. A final test one week later assessed whether there was any long-term advantage to sleeping between two study sessions.
Results:
Sleep significantly enhanced consolidation of factual knowledge (p=0.01, d=0.72), but groups did not differ in their capacity to relearn the materials (p=0.72, d=0.10). After one week, a numerical memory advantage remained for the sleep group but was no longer significant (p=0.21, d=0.35).
Conclusions:
Reduced forgetting after sleep is a robust finding that extends to our ecologically valid learning task, but we found no evidence that sleep enhances relearning. Our findings can exclude a large effect of sleep on long-term memory after one week, but hint at a smaller effect, leaving open the possibility of practical benefits from organizing study sessions around nocturnal sleep. These findings highlight the importance of revisiting key sleep-memory effects to assess their relevance to long-term learning outcomes with naturalistic learning materials.
... A remarkable 38% of U.S. adolescents believe they must cheat to succeed (Gentina et al., 2017), and a significant association emerges between access to such technologies (Hamlen, 2012;Trushell et al., 2013) and academic iCheating. Alhola and Polo-Kantola (2007) revealed that sleep deprivation affects cognitive performance, long-term memory, and decision-making (Mazza et al., 2016). To combat their stress and test anxiety, Gen Z students with a high level of nomophobia, who suffer sleep disturbances, naturally turn to their smartphones for relief, which leads to iCheating. ...
... Teachers and parents should tap viral marketing strategies, through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, to encourage ethical behaviors and create positive contagion. Educational institutions, parents, and public policy makers must understand the dark sides of nomophobia, so that they can establish expectations for proper usage that help adolescents avoid overdependence, take back control of their lives, enhance learning and memory, ensure long-term retention of materials (Mazza et al., 2016), and prevent iCheating. Experts should help parents and their adolescents use smartphones properly; positive influences and susceptible members among peers also should be identified (Aral & Walker, 2012), so that adolescents' emotional intelligence can be channeled into creative, pro-social, ethical behaviors rather than iCheating. ...
... The effect is often attributed to sleep-associated memory consolidation, assuming that memory contents are reactivated during certain sleep stages, which strengthens and stabilizes them (for reviews, see Rasch & Born, 2013;Stickgold, 2013). Although research on prolonged retention intervals is scarce, some studies reported sleep benefits also after longer delay than just 12 hr (e.g., Gais, Lucas, & Born, 2006;Griessenberger et al., 2012;Mazza et al., 2016;Stickgold, James, & Hobson, 2000;Wagner, Hallschmid, Rasch, & Born, 2006; but see Schönauer, Grätsch, & Gais, 2015), suggesting that sleep-associated memory consolidation can have a long-lasting influence on remembering. ...
... This holds, although there is not an abundance of studies examining how long-lasting such sleep benefits really are. A few studies investigated the issue and reported sleep benefits across delays that go beyond 12-h intervals (Gais et al., 2006;Griessenberger et al., 2012;Mazza et al., 2016;Stickgold et al., 2000;Talamini, Nieuwenhuis, Takashima, & Jensen, 2008;Wagner et al., 2006), which is why initially we expected long-lasting sleep effects in our experiments, too (see above). The results of Experiments 2a and 2b of the present study show a different picture, however. ...
Retrieval practice relative to restudy of learned material typically
attenuates time-dependent forgetting. A recent study examining this testing
effect across 12-h delays filled with nocturnal sleep versus daytime wakefulness,
however, showed that sleep directly following encoding benefited recall of
restudied but not of retrieval practiced items, which reduced, and even
eliminated, the testing effect after sleep (Bäuml, Holterman, & Abel, 2014).
The present study investigated in 4 experiments, whether this modulating
role of sleep for the testing effect is influenced by two factors that have
previously been shown to increase the testing effect: corrective feedback and
prolonged retention intervals. Experiments 1a and 1b applied 12-h delays and
showed benefits of sleep for recall after both restudy and retrieval practice with
feedback, but not after retrieval practice without feedback. Experiments 2a
and 2b applied 24-h or 7-day delays and failed to observe any long-lasting
benefits of sleep directly after encoding, on both restudied and retrieval
practiced items. These results indicate that both corrective feedback and
prolonged retention intervals reduce the modulating role of sleep for the testing
effect as it can be observed after 12-h delays and in the absence of corrective
feedback, which suggests a fairly limited influence of sleep on the effect.
... These runs continue until all items are recalled correctly once. This procedure enables all participants to encode items without over-learning any of them [99][100][101] , while achieving the desired criterion for all items in all participants. ...
Understanding the complex relationship between sleep and memory consolidation is a major challenge in cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Many studies suggest that sleep triggers off-line memory processes, resulting in less forgetting of declarative memory and performance stabilization in non-declarative memory. However, the role of sleep in human memory consolidation is still under considerable debate, and numerous contradictory and non-replicable findings have been reported. Methodological issues related to experimental designs, task characteristics and measurements, and data-analysis practices all influence the effects that are observed and their interpretation. In this Perspective, we review methodological issues in sleep and memory studies and suggest constructive solutions to address them. We believe that implementing these solutions in future sleep and memory research will substantially advance the field and improve understanding of the specific role of sleep in memory consolidation. Sections
... High-alpha power did not change significantly within each training session, although there was some evidence for within-session improvement indexed by more frequent silencing of the tone as each session progressed (supplementary Fig. 1). It is likely that sleep consolidation accelerated training benefits 29 , which may explain why the between-session effects were stronger than the within-session changes. To capitalize on this effect, future research could implement a higher number of shorter duration training sessions, spread over a greater number of days. ...
Aberrant movement-related cortical activity has been linked to impaired motor function in Parkinson's disease (PD). Dopaminergic drug treatment can restore these, but dosages and long-term treatment are limited by adverse side-effects. This experiment reports the first study of home-based electroencephalographic (EEG) neurofeedback training as a non-pharmacological candidate treatment for PD. Sixteen people with PD received six home visits comprising symptomology self-reports, a standardised motor assessment, and a precision handgrip force production task while EEG was recorded (visits 1, 2 and 6); and 3 × 1-hr EEG neurofeedback training sessions to reduce EEG high-alpha power before initiating handgrip movements (visits 3 to 5). Participants successfully learned to self-regulate movement-related alpha rhythms, and this appeared to expedite the initiation of precision movements. There was no evidence of wider symptomology reduction. Interviews indicated that the intervention was well-received. We conclude that home-based neurofeedback for people with PD is feasible and warrants further research.
... These runs continue until all items are recalled correctly once. This procedure enables all participants to encode the same number of items while no item is 'over-learned' for example, see [108][109][110] . This procedure could be used to reach 100% for the baseline level in all participants. ...
Understanding the complex relationship between sleep and memory is a major challenge in neuroscience. Many studies on memory consolidation in humans suggest that sleep triggers offline memory processes, resulting in less forgetting of declarative memory and performance stabilization in non-declarative memory. However, issues related to non-optimal experimental designs, task characteristics and measurements, and inappropriate data analysis practices can significantly affect the interpretation of the effect of sleep on memory. In this article, we discuss these issues and suggest constructive solutions to address them. We believe that implementing these solutions in future sleep and memory research will significantly advance this field by improving the understanding of the specific role of sleep in memory consolidation.
... One such strategy is to structure learning into a format that incorporates distributed practice (Cepeda et al., 2006), with multiple spaced-out training sessions (Pashler et al., 2007). The breaks between sessions would ideally include the opportunity for sleep, given that long-term learning has been found to be enhanced if trainees sleep between training sessions (Mazza et al., 2016). In this context, it is worth noting that the successfully retained driver training intervention reported by Regan et al. (2000) was spaced over five weekly sessions. ...
... However, as we also found evidence for decreased response times during the congruency task after one night of sleep, these results can be explained by the consolidation of the new knowledge rather than a word recognition effect. This is, memory for newly learned information is enhanced following a period of sleep, making it easier to retrieve information (Klinzing et al., 2019;Mazza et al., 2016) and therefore resulting in improved performance in the next session. Recent findings of Wang et al. (2022) showed that even short naps facilitated the acquisition and application of L-SS mappings in preschool children. ...
This study examined how top-down control influenced letter-speech sound (L-SS) learning, the initial phase of learning to read. In 2020, 107 Dutch children (53 boys, Mage = 106.845 months) learned eight L-SS correspondences, either preceded by goal-directed or implicit instructions. Symbol knowledge and artificial word-reading ability were assessed immediately after learning and on the subsequent day to examine the effect of sleep. Goal-directed children were faster and more efficient in learning a new script and had better learning outcomes compared to children who were not instructed about the goal of the task. This study demonstrates that directing children toward the goal can promote L-SS learning and consolidation, giving insights into how top-down control influences the initial phase of reading acquisition.
... These runs continue until all items are remembered correctly once. This procedure enables all participants to encode the same number of items while no item is 'over-learned' for examples, see 111,112,113 . This procedure could be used to reach 100% for baseline encoding level in all participants. ...
Understanding the complex relationship between sleep and memory is a major challenge in neuroscience. Many studies on memory consolidation in humans suggest that sleep triggers offline memory processes, resulting in less forgetting of declarative memory and performance stabilization in non-declarative memory. However, an increasing number of contradictory findings reveal potential issues with how research is conducted in this field and call into question the reliability and interpretation of the results. All scientific disciplines face similar challenges. In this regard, research on the relationship between sleep and memory is still very fortunate. Yet, there is a constant need to fine-tune the methodology. In this article, we describe four behavioral methodological issues in human sleep and memory research that should be improved: non-optimal experimental designs, task complexity, fatigue effects in repetitive tasks, and inappropriate data analysis practices. We then offer solutions to each of these issues. We believe that implementing these solutions in future sleep and memory research will lead to more reliable results and significantly advance our understanding in this field.
... Although sleep has repeatedly been shown to enhance memory (Ashworth et al., 2013;Diekelmann & Born, 2010), B€ auml and colleagues (2014) found that sleep enhanced memory after restudying, but only had a minimal impact memory after retrieval practice. That is, adding another learning benefit (brought about by sleep) to testing conferred little additional benefit to memory (but see Abel et al., 2019;Mazza et al., 2016). More research is needed to better understand when retrieval practice should be combined with other productive techniques to optimize students' learning. ...
Students and instructors are looking for effective study and instructional strategies that enhance student achievement across a range of content and conditions. The current Special Issue features seven articles and one report, which used varied methodologies to investigate the benefits of practising retrieval and providing feedback for learning. This editorial serves as an introduction and conceptual framework for these papers. Consistent with trends in the broader literature, the research in this Special Issue goes beyond asking whether retrieval practice and feedback enhance learning, but rather, when, for whom, and under what conditions. The first set of articles examined the benefits of retrieval practice compared to restudy (i.e., the testing effect) and various moderators of the testing effect, including participants’ cognitive and personality characteristics ( Bertilsson et al., 2021 ) as well as the timing of the practice test and sleep ( Kroneisen & Kuepper-Tetzel, 2021 ). The second set of articles examined the efficacy of different types of feedback, including complex versus simple feedback ( Enders et al., 2021 ; Pieper et al., 2021 ) and positively or negatively valenced feedback ( Jones et al., 2021 ). Finally, the third set of articles to this Special Issue examined practical considerations of implementing both retrieval practice and feedback with educationally relevant materials and contexts. Some of the practical issues examined included when students should search the web to look for answers to practice problems ( Giebl et al., 2021 ), whether review quizzes should be required and contribute to students’ final grades ( den Boer et al., 2021 ), and how digital learning environments should be designed to teach students to use effective study strategies such as retrieval practice ( Endres et al., 2021 ). In short, retrieval and feedback practices are effective and robust tools to enhance learning and teaching, and the papers in the current Special Issue provide insight into ways for students and teachers to implement these strategies.
... Ainsi, il semblerait que plus l'espacement entre deux sessions de révision est important et plus ces éléments contextuels seront divers et nombreux pour participer favorablement au processus de récupération des connaissances lors d'un examen differential storage en anglais ; Bjork & Allen, 1970;Emilie Gerbier, 2011). Enfin, dans le cas d'espacement de l'ordre d'un jour, le bénéfice du sommeil a été avancé dans le processus de consolidation des connaissances, mais cette piste reste peu étudiée à ce jour pour en tirer des conclusions claires (Frankland & Bontempi, 2005;Mazza et al., 2016). Tout comme l'usage de l'apprentissage par récupération en mémoire, la promotion de cette méthode de planification des révisions ne cesse d'être faite auprès des enseignants et des étudiants par le biais de plusieurs canaux ; Vidéos de vulgarisation par la chaîne Osmose 20 ). ...
L’apprentissage scolaire implique généralement une phase d’étude des cours suivie d'une phase d’évaluation pour mesurer l'efficacité de la première. Dans cette conception, la phase de test sert à quantifier la réussite de l’apprentissage mais n’est pas envisagée comme outil d’apprentissage. Pourtant, de nombreuses études ont montré l’importance des tests comme processus actif pour consolider des connaissances à long terme. Une autre pratique peu utilisée est la distribution d’un même apprentissage dans le temps. Alors que le bachotage favorise la mémorisation à court terme, l’espacement des révisions favorise la consolidation sur le long terme. A l’heure actuelle, ces méthodes sont méconnues des enseignants et des élèves alors que les bénéfices de l’entrainement par récupération en mémoire et de l’espacement ont été répliqués de manière robuste avec des populations et contenus variés. La start-up Didask a créé la plate-forme d’enseignement numérique du même nom en incorporant les résultats de ces recherches menées sur l’apprentissage. En collaboration avec Didask, ma thèse s’est articulée autour de la problématique suivante : quel est l’agencement optimal des phases de récupération en mémoire par rapport à la présentation des contenus d’un cours ? Le premier chapitre est une introduction générale pour contextualiser cette recherche. Le second chapitre compile les résultats de trois méta-analyses portant sur l’effet de l’apprentissage avec tests répétés et espacés dans le temps. La première méta-analyse a montré un bénéfice significatif de l’apprentissage avec tests espacés dans le temps sur la rétention en mémoire par rapport à l’apprentissage avec tests massés dans le temps (g = 0.74). La seconde méta-analyse suggère en revanche un bénéfice non significatif de l’apprentissage avec tests espacés par rapport à l’apprentissage avec relectures espacées dans le temps (g=0.46). La dernière méta-analyse n’a pas démontré de différence entre un planning expansif d’apprentissage avec tests espacés (accroissement progressif de l’intervalle de temps entre les sessions d’apprentissage) et un planning uniforme (maintien du même intervalle entre les sessions, g = 0.032). L’ensemble de ces résultats confirme le net avantage de l’apprentissage avec tests espacés dans le temps, mais le planning d’espacement optimal n’est pas nécessairement expansif. Les chapitres 3, 4, et 5 présentent trois expérimentations menées sur Didask. L’objectif était de mesurer les bénéfices de différents emplacements et planning de tests d’apprentissage sur la rétention en mémoire une semaine à un mois après la session d’apprentissage. Les résultats de l’Expérience 1 ont démontré qu’il est préférable de faire des tests d’apprentissage après la lecture du cours pour une meilleure mémorisation plutôt qu’avant. De plus, l’avantage de faire des tests après la lecture du cours était observé sur les informations non testées lors de l’apprentissage. Les résultats de l’Expérience 2 indiquent que le degré de granularité des contenus importe lors de l’apprentissage par relectures successives : un découpage fin permet une meilleure mémorisation qu’un découpage plus grossier. Par contre, l’importance de la granularité disparait dans la condition avec des tests d’apprentissage. Enfin, l’Expérience 3 a répliqué l’effet de récupération en mémoire mais pas l’effet d’espacement. Contrairement aux hypothèses de départ, l’effet de la combinaison des deux stratégies d’apprentissage n’était pas significatif. Néanmoins, l’apprentissage avec tests espacés permettait en moyenne une meilleure mémorisation que l’apprentissage avec tests massés, avec relectures espacées, et avec relectures massées dans le temps. Les résultats de cette thèse apportent une meilleure compréhension sur la manière d’utiliser l’apprentissage par les tests. Ils suggèrent également de nouvelles pistes de recherche sur l’optimisation des apprentissages pour promouvoir la consolidation de nouvelles connaissances.
... This suggests that the newly learned lexical items were temporarily stored in the hippocampus and became re-represented in cortical areas after sleep, which is in line with predictions from McClelland's complementary learning systems account. In addition to offline gains in the absence of further practice, sleep between two periods of practice in word learning can benefit long-term retention of novel words (Mazza et al., 2016), and even daytime naps or short periods of sleep can improve or stabilize learning of tasks, including word learning (Lahl et al., 2008;Heim et al., 2017). The extant literature shows clear benefits of sleep for word learning; however, of interest to the current chapter is whether similar findings are also observed in speech learning. ...
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https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/64900
... After the initial acquisition and consolidation of a task, memories can be modified and strengthened through further experiences [27]. In fact, it is well known that extensive repetitive practice of a task is important for the retention of knowledge [28]. However, it is not known if these changes in the memory strength depend on the same cellular and molecular mechanisms. ...
The endocannabinoid system is capable of modulating multiple physiological brain functions including learning and memory. Moreover, there is evidence that the processes of acquisition and consolidation have distinct biological basis. We used the cannabinoid agonist WIN 55,212-2 (WIN-2) to investigate whether chronic CB1 activation affects acquisition and consolidation differently by evaluating gene expression in the hippocampus (HIP)
and prefrontal cortex (PFC). Swiss mice were treated with WIN-2 (2mg/kg) and submitted to the Morris water maze to evaluate different aspects of memory. We observed short-term memory impairment in acquisition of the spatial task while consolidation remained unchanged. In the PFC, animals that received WIN-2 prior to the task exhibited increased expression of the 2-AG synthesis enzyme diacylglycerol lipase and decreased levels of the degradation enzyme monoacylglycerol lipase, while mice that were treated after the task for the evaluation of consolidation exhibited the opposite profile. With respect to genes related to AEA metabolism, no correlation between the molecular and behavioral data could be established. In this sense, the cognitive impairment in the acquisition promoted by WIN-2 treatment may be related to a possible increase in the concentration of 2-AG in the PFC. Overall, this study confirms the relevance of the endocannabinoid system in the modulation of cognitive processes. A better understanding of the mechanisms underlying endocannabinoids roles in cognition could provide guidance for the development of treatments to reduce the cognitive deficits caused by drug abuse.
... Intriguingly, this formation of long-term memory that is facilitated by sleep has very persistent effects. Effects of immediate sleep versus initial wakefulness after learning on subsequent recognition performance have been demonstrated to last for several months in case of neutral visual stimuli (Takashima et al., 2006) or word pairs (Mazza et al., 2016) and even for 4 years in case of emotional text (Wagner et al., 2006). These long-lasting consequences of may be highly relevant for insomnia disorder with its key characteristic of sleep fragmentation by arousals, especially during REM sleep (Merica et al., 1998;Perlis et al., 2001;Feige et al., 2008;Riemann et al., 2012). ...
Studies suggest that sleep supports persistent changes in the neuronal representation of emotional experiences such that they are remembered better and less distressful when recalled than when they were first experienced. It is conceivable that sleep fragmentation by arousals, a key characteristic of insomnia disorder, could hamper the downregulation of distress. In this study, we sought further support for the idea that insomnia disorder may involve a lasting deficiency to downregulate emotional distress. We used functional MRI in insomnia disorder (n = 27) and normal sleepers (n = 30) to identify how brain activation differs between novel and relived self-conscious emotions. We evaluated whether brain activity elicited by reliving emotional memories from the distant past resembles the activity elicited by novel emotional experiences more in insomnia disorder than in normal sleepers. Limbic areas were activated during novel shameful experiences as compared to neutral experiences in both normal sleepers and insomnia disorder. In normal sleepers, reliving of shameful experiences from the past did not elicit a limbic response. In contrast, participants with insomnia disorder recruited overlapping parts of the limbic circuit, in particular the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, during both new and relived shameful experiences. The differential activity patterns with new and old emotions in normal sleepers suggest that reactivation of the long-term memory trace does not recruit the limbic circuit. The overlap of activations in insomnia disorder is in line with the hypothesis that the disorder involves a deficiency to dissociate the limbic circuit from the emotional memory trace. Moreover, the findings provide further support for a role of the anterior cingulate cortex in insomnia.
... While the nap benefited memory, our protocol was not intended to determine whether consolidation, encoding, or some combination of these processes was responsible. Learning materials from pre-nap blocks may have been preferentially strengthened, stabilized [1][2][3][4]6 , and reorganized in order to promote subsequent relearning 18 . Encoding of information in post-nap learning blocks may have also benefited from the nap, since naps can restore encoding capacity 8,9 . ...
Study objectives
Daytime naps benefit long-term memory relative to taking a break and remaining awake. However, the use of naps as a practical way to improve learning has not been examined, in particular, how memory following a nap compares with spending the equivalent amount of time cramming.
Methods
Young adults learned detailed factual knowledge in sessions that flanked one-hour spent napping (n=27), taking a break (n=27), or cramming that information (n=30). Recall was examined 30-mins and one week after learning.
Results
When tested 30-mins after learning, cramming and napping led to significantly better memory than taking a break. After a week, napping maintained this significant advantage, but cramming did not.
Conclusions
These findings demonstrate the longer-term benefits of napping for retention of memoranda akin to what students encounter daily, and encourage more widespread adoption of napping in education.
... In contrast, contingencies that increase conscious processing (e.g., pressure) among performers at cognitive and associative stages of acquisition may enhance performance (e.g., Beilock, Carr, MacMahon, & Starkes, 2002;Gray, 2004;Malhotra, Poolton, Wilson, Omuro, & Masters, 2015). In addition to extending the acquisition phase, future studies could also introduce a period of sleep consolidation, which has been argued to further automatize skills (e.g., Mazza et al., 2016;Walker & Stickgold, 2006), prior to delayed retention and pressure tests. Delayed retention tests in particular would allow assessment of the extent to which participants truly learned the sequence, rather than their proficiency at acquiring and memorizing it in a single day, as we tested here. ...
This study was designed to test the theorized link between reinvestment, motor chunks, and conscious processing, to provide a thorough examination of reinvestment theory. The authors measured electroencephalographic power and connectivity alongside self-reported conscious processing and behavioral indices of chunking in a 2 (group) × 5 (block) mixed-model design. A total of 55 individuals acquired a motor sequence (blocks A1, A2, A3, and A4) by relatively explicit (errorful) or implicit (errorless) paradigms. Then they performed in a pressure condition (block T). Results confirmed that chunking characterizes both modes of acquisition. However, explicit acquisition resulted in quicker chunking, reduced conscious processing, and increased cortical efficiency (left-temporal high-alpha power). In support of reinvestment theory, self-reported conscious processing tended to increase under pressure among explicit trainees only. In contrast to reinvestment theory, this had no adverse effect on performance. The results endorse explicit acquisition as an effective mode of training and provide a new neurophysiological explanation of this phenomenon.
... Sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy. However, we recently showed that relearn after sleep significantly enhances memory performances [98]. We recently showed that interleaving sleep between learning and relearning sessions reduced significantly the amount of practice needed to relearn while ensuring increased long-term retention. ...
Numerous studies have explored the effect of sleep on memory. It is well known that a period of sleep, compared to a similar period of wakefulness, protects memories from interference, improves performance, and might also reorganize memory traces in a way that encourages creativity and rule extraction. It is assumed that these benefits come from the reactivation of brain networks, mainly involving the hippocampal structure, as well as from their synchronization with neocortical networks during sleep, thereby underpinning sleep-dependent memory consolidation and reorganization. However, this memory reorganization is difficult to explain within classical memory models. The present paper aims to describe whether the influence of sleep on memory could be explained using a multiple trace memory model that is consistent with the concept of embodied cognition: the Act-In (activation-integration) memory model. We propose an original approach to the results observed in sleep research on the basis of two simple mechanisms, namely activation and integration.
Understanding the complex relationship between sleep and memory consolidation is a major challenge in cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Many studies suggest that sleep triggers off-line memory processes, resulting in less forgetting of declarative memory and performance stabilization in non-declarative memory. However, the role of sleep in human memory consolidation is still under considerable debate, and numerous contradictory and non-replicable findings have been reported. Methodological issues related to experimental designs, task characteristics and measurements, and data-analysis practices all influence the effects that are observed and their interpretation. In this Perspective, we review methodological issues in sleep and memory studies and suggest constructive solutions to address them. We believe that implementing these solutions in future sleep and memory research will substantially advance the field and improve understanding of the specific role of sleep in memory consolidation.
Many studies have shown that compared to the restudy condition (RS), retrieval practice (RP) enhances the long-retention memory of retrieved items (i.e., the testing effect), and facilitates later memory of non-retrieved but related items (i.e., the transfer effect). However, previous studies have usually used repeated study and repeated testing, which are included in study-testing cycles. Therefore, it is unclear to what extent the factors of repeated study and repeated testing influence testing and transfer effects over time. In this study, participants studied sentences that described various episodes, then tested a half subset of the original sentences under three conditions (RP, RS, control). After retention intervals of 10 min, 1 day and 7 days, they recalled all of the information in the sentences. The results showed that the testing effect was enhanced by repeated study or repeated testing, while the transfer effect occurred only after both repeated study and repeated testing. Furthermore, repeated study or repeated testing slowed down the forgetting of retrieved items, while the forgetting of non-retrieved items occurred after both repeated study and repeated testing. The testing effect increased over time, but the transfer effect remained relatively stable over time. These results clarified different roles of multiple study repetitions and testing opportunities in the testing effect and the transfer effect, and suggest that the repeated retrieval could be combined with repeated study to optimally promote long-term retention of the memory of tested and non-tested items.
This study investigated the effect of sleep on novel word learning through reading context. Seventy-four healthy young adults attended two testing sessions, with either overnight sleep (sleep group) or daytime wakefulness (wake group) occurring between the sessions. At the initial learning session, participants identified the hidden meanings of novel words embedded within sentence contexts and were subsequently tested on their recognition of the novel word meanings. A recognition test was also conducted at the delayed session. The analyses revealed comparable recognition of novel word meanings for the sleep and wake group at both the initial and the delayed session, indicating that there was no benefit of sleep compared to wakefulness for novel word learning through context. Overall, this study highlights the critical influence of encoding method on sleep-dependent learning, where not all forms of word learning appear to benefit from sleep for consolidation.
Background and Objective The role of night sleep in learning and consolidating memory has been mentioned and researched in many studies. Different tools have been used to determine the effect of sleep. However, this kind of research in the Iranian population is limited. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the role of sleep in immediate and late learning of new words of second language in a number of English language learners.Methods Forty Persian males aged 18–35 years old participated in our study in two groups. The first group completed learning steps at 8–10 AM and repeated the test after 12 hours. The second group performed the initial stages of learning at 8–10 PM and repeated the test next morning. Everyone completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Persian version for evaluating their sleep habits during last month and the effect of their sleep habits on achieved task scores.Results Comparison of the number of recalled words (NRW) between the two groups showed a significant difference (p-value < 0.001) with better performance in night group. The NRW during the second stage was positively influenced by better subjective sleep quality, lower sleep latency, higher sleep efficiency, and more sleep duration significantly (p-value < 0.05). There was no significant relationship of NRW with sleep disorders, sleep medications, or daytime dysfunction.Conclusions Adequate night sleep could improve late learning of second language in our research subjects. Sleep quality, latency in falling asleep, and subjective sleep quality might play a role in this learning process.
This study investigated the effect of overnight sleep on associative novel word learning and examined whether the effects of sleep on word learning are modulated by the provision of semantic information. Seventy-five healthy young adults attended an initial word-learning session followed by a delayed testing session. An interval of overnight sleep (sleep group) or daytime wakefulness (wake group) separated the two sessions. At the initial learning session, participants learned three-word names of 20 novel objects, where half the names comprised a novel word and two semantic attributes (semantic condition), and half comprised a novel word and two meaningless proper names (name condition). Novel word cued-recall was measured at both the initial and the delayed session. Although both groups demonstrated similar cued-recall accuracy at the first session, by the delayed session the sleep group demonstrated superior cued-recall accuracy compared to the wake group. There was no influence of semantics on the sleep-dependent consolidation of the novel words. Overall, these findings suggest that novel words encoded with or without the provision of semantic information can benefit from an overnight sleep period for consolidation.
People recall more information after sleep than after an equally long period of wakefulness. This sleep benefit in episodic memory has been documented in almost a century of research. However, an integrative review of hypothesized underlying processes, a comprehensive quantification of the benefit, and a systematic investigation of potential moderators has been missing so far. Here, we address these issues by analyzing 823 effect sizes from 271 independent samples that were reported in 177 articles published between 1967 and 2019. Using multilevel metaregressions with robust variance estimates, we found a moderate overall sleep benefit in episodic memory (g = 0.44). Moderator analyses revealed four important findings: First, the sleep benefit is larger when stimuli are studied multiple times instead of just once. Second, for word materials, the effect size depends on the retrieval procedure: It is largest in free recall, followed by cued recall and recognition tasks. Third, the sleep benefit is stronger in pre-post difference measures of retention than in delayed memory tests. Fourth, sleep benefits are larger for natural sleep and nighttime naps than for alternative sleep study designs (e.g., slow-wave sleep; SWS-deprived sleep, daytime naps). Although there was no obvious evidence for selective reporting, it is a potential threat to the validity of the results. When accounting for selective reporting bias, the overall effect of sleep on episodic memory is reduced but still significant (g = 0.28). We argue that our results support an integrative, multicausal theoretical account of sleep-induced episodic memory benefits and provide guidance to increase their replicability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
People recall more information after sleep than after an equally long period of wakefulness. This sleep benefit in episodic memory has been documented in almost a century of research. However, an integrative review of hypothesized underlying processes, a comprehensive quantification of the benefit, and a systematic investigation of potential moderators has been missing so far. Here, we address these issues by analyzing 823 effect sizes from 271 independent samples that were reported in 177 articles published between 1967 and 2019. Using multilevel meta-regressions with robust variance estimates, we found a moderate overall sleep benefit in episodic memory (g = 0.44). Moderator analyses revealed four important findings: First, the sleep benefit is larger when stimuli are studied multiple times instead of just once. Second, for word materials, the effect size depends on the retrieval procedure: It is largest in free recall, followed by cued recall and recognition tasks. Third, the sleep benefit is stronger in pre-post difference measures of retention than in delayed memory tests. Fourth, sleep benefits are larger for natural sleep and nighttime naps than foralternative sleep-study designs (e.g., SWS-deprived sleep, daytime naps). Although there was no obvious evidence for selective reporting, it is a potential threat to the validity of the results. When accounting for selective reporting bias, the overall effect of sleep on episodic memory is reduced but still significant (g = 0.28). We argue that our results support an integrative, multi-causal theoretical account of sleep-induced episodic memory benefits and provide guidance to increase their replicability.
Education in the 21st century is called upon to prepare students with disabilities to enter a high-consciousness society where people can learn, think and react fast. The current review paper aims at investigating the role of fast learning in special education. We trace the essential indicators of speed learning with a special focus on those factors that are most relevant to learning disabilities. Afterward, we present evidence-based training techniques and strategies that rapidly rewire the brain and speed up learning. In addition, we examine the role of ICTs as essential training tools in speed learning. Finally, we discuss the role of metacognition in training fast and conscious learners. The results of this review showed that speed learning training techniques improve all those factors that accelerate learning such as spatial attention, visual span, processing speed, speed reaction, executive functions, metacognition, and consciousness. Most important, fast learning strategies meliorate control processes and spatial intelligence which is extremely fast and powerful. Metacognition provides learners with all those meta-abilites needed to enter a state of peak performance. This study also points to the option of including speed training strategies in schools to create inclusive learning environments and help students with or without disabilities to transcend their limitations and become conscious and high-capacity learners.
There is increasing evidence to indicate that sleep plays a role in language acquisition and consolidation; however, there has been substantial variability in methodological approaches used to examine this phenomenon. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to investigate the effect of sleep on novel word learning in adults, and explore whether these effects differed by retrieval domain (i.e., recall, recognition, and tests of lexical integration). Twenty-five unique studies met the inclusion criteria for the review, and 42 separate outcome measures were synthesized in the meta-analysis (k = 29 separate between-group comparisons, n = 1,396 participants). The results from the omnibus meta-analysis indicated that sleep was beneficial for novel word learning compared with wakefulness (g = 0.50). Effect sizes differed across the separate domain-specific meta-analyses, with moderate effects for recall (g = 0.57) and recognition memory (g = 0.52), and a small effect for tasks which measured lexical integration (g = 0.39). Overall, the results of this meta-analysis indicate that sleep generally benefits novel word acquisition and consolidation compared with wakefulness across differing retrieval domains. This systematic review highlights the potential for sleep to be used to improve second-language learning in healthy adults, and overall provides further insight into methods to facilitate language development.
Although multiple consensus statements have called for large-scale efforts to improve clinicians' communication skills regarding a variety of difficult conversations in medicine, this goal will be difficult to attain because there are no readily scalable, validated communication skills training programs for clinicians. However, novel applications of existing technologies and approaches grounded in learning science can overcome the scalability barriers. Moreover, future advances in virtual reality and artificial intelligence are likely to greatly enhance the possibilities for communication skills training programs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a scalable, theoretically grounded method to train clinicians in advanced communication skills in medicine. First, we summarize four key principles of adult learning relevant to communication skills training in medicine. Second, we discuss recommended practices to design effective technology-enhanced educational interventions, with an emphasis on achieving high amounts of user engagement. Third, we synthesize these principles into a framework for a web- and videoconference-based platform for teaching advanced communication skills in medicine. Once developed, this low-cost, scalable training platform has the potential to allow thousands of clinicians to acquire the advanced communication skills needed for difficult conversations in medicine.
El sueño favorece la codificación de las representaciones neurales de las nuevas memorias, su estabilización y mantenimiento, sobre todo cuando la codificación ha sido débil, así como las posteriores transformaciones que determinarán su durabilidad. El recuerdo intencionado durante la codificación de nuevas memorias ejerce un efecto similar al del sueño. Sin embargo, el sueño continúa siendo necesario para mantener las transformaciones desencadenadas por el recuerdo intencionado. El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo evaluar si los procesos de consolidación que operan durante el sueño interaccionan con los procesos de consolidación asociados al recuerdo intencionado que tienen lugar al día siguiente para promover la transformación de las representaciones neurales, y si el resultado de dicha interacción depende de la calidad de la codificación.
La calidad de la codificación se manipuló acortando la duración del sueño en la noche previa a la fase de adquisición y se evaluó estimando el grado de consistencia de los patrones EEG asociados a la repetición del estímulo durante la adquisición de la memoria. Como índice de consolidación durante el sueño se utilizó el grado de acoplamiento temporal entre los husos de sueño y las ondas lentas (HS-OL) durante el periodo de sueño nocturno que siguió a la fase de adquisición. Para evaluar las transformaciones asociadas al recuerdo reiterado de la información durante la fase de memoria de reconocimiento, se estimó el grado de similitud entre los patrones EEG asociados a la codificación y los patrones EEG asociados a cada una de las repeticiones del estímulo durante la fase de prueba. La similitud fue específica cuando se utilizaron los mismos estímulos en la codificación y posterior recuperación, y categórica cuando los estímulos no eran los mismos pero pertenecían a la misma categoría semántica. Los cambios en estas dos formas de similitud nos permitieron determinar si el sueño y el recuerdo intencionado cooperaban para favorecer la especificidad o la generalización de las representaciones neurales en función de la calidad de la codificación.
La restricción aguda de sueño redujo la consistencia de los patrones EEG asociados a la repetición del estímulo durante la fase de adquisición. La reducción de la calidad de la codificación no se vio acompañada de una peor memoria de reconocimiento debido a que los participantes que fueron privados de sueño en la noche previa a la fase de adquisición reactivaron durante más tiempo los patrones neurales frontoparietales asociados a la codificación. Esta reactivación se vio favorecida por un aumento del acoplamiento HS-OL en la noche previa. Cuanto mayor fue dicho acoplamiento mayor fue la magnitud de la similitud entre los patrones EEG asociados a la codificación y posterior recuperación. Los procesos de consolidación que operan durante el sueño y que en el presente estudio están indexados por el grado de acoplamiento HS-OL interaccionaron con el recuerdo reiterado que se produjo en la fase de reconocimiento al día siguiente para transformar las representaciones neurales de las memorias adquiridas el día anterior. Sin embargo, el resultado de esta interacción estuvo moderado por la calidad de la codificación. El efecto combinado del sueño y el recuerdo reiterado supuso un aumento de la generalización de las memorias más débiles en detrimento de la especificidad, y lo contrario en el caso de las memorias más fuertes.
Los resultados del presente trabajo no solo apoyan la idea de que el sueño favorece la consolidación de las memorias más débiles, sino que también sugieren que los procesos de consolidación asociados al sueño y al recuero intencionado interaccionan a la hora de promover un tipo de transformaciones u otras, en función de cuán buena haya sido la calidad de la codificación.
Repetition learning is an efficient way to enhance memory performance in our daily lives and educational practice. However, it is unclear to what extent repetition or multiple exposures modulate different types of memory over time. The inconsistent findings on it may be associated with encoding strategy. In this study, participants were presented with pairs of pictures (same, similar, and different) once (see section “Experiment 1”) or three times (see section “Experiment 2”) and were asked to make a same/similar/different judgment. By this, an elaborative encoding is more required for the “same” and “similar” conditions than the “different” condition. Then after intervals of 10 min, 1 day, and 1 week, they were asked to perform a recognition test to discriminate a repeated and a similar picture, followed by a remember/know/guess assessment and a contextual judgment. The results showed that after learning the objects three times, both item memory and contextual memory improved. Multiple exposures enhanced the hit rate for the “same” and “similar” conditions, but did not change the false alarm rate significantly. The recollection, rather than the familiarity, contributed to the repetition effect. In addition, the memory enhancement was manifested in each encoding condition and retention interval, especially for the “same” condition and at 10-min and 1-day intervals. These results clarify how repetition influences item and contextual memories during discriminative learning and suggest that multiple exposures render the details more vividly remembered and retained over time when elaborative encoding is emphasized.
It is well known that distributed learning (DL) leads to improved memory performance compared with massed learning (ML) (i.e., spacing effect). However, the extent to which the hippocampus is involved in the spacing effect at shorter and longer retention intervals remains unclear. To address this issue, two groups of participants were asked to encode face–scene pairs at 20‐min, 1‐day, and 1‐month intervals before they were scanned using fMRI during an associative recognition task. The pairs were repeated six times in either a massed (i.e., six times in 1 day) or a distributed (i.e., six times over 3 days, twice per day) manner. The results showed that compared with that in the ML group, the activation of the left hippocampus was stronger in the DL group when the participants retrieved old pairs correctly and rejected new pairs correctly at different retention intervals. In addition, the posterior hippocampus was more strongly activated when the new associations were rejected correctly after DL than ML, especially at the 1‐month interval. Hence, our results provide evidence that the hippocampus is involved in better memory performance after DL compared to ML at both shorter and longer retention intervals.
La pédagogie Montessori est une méthode d’éducation qui a été mise au point au début du siècle dernier par Maria Montessori pour des enfants d’un quartier défavorisé de Rome en Italie. Depuis sa création, elle s’est développée à la marge de l’éducation nationale et se retrouve principalement dans des écoles privées. La pédagogie Montessori devient cependant de plus en plus populaire auprès des enseignants de l’école maternelle publique. Ce récent engouement apparaît fondé à la vue de plusieurs principes de cette méthode. En effet, elle promeut l’autonomie, l’auto-régulation, la coopération entre pairs d’âges variés et l’apprentissage à partir de matériels sensoriels et auto-correctifs. Ces caractéristiques sont plutôt en accord avec les connaissances scientifiques sur l’apprentissage et le développement de l’enfant. Cependant, à ce jour, les preuves expérimentales rigoureuses de son efficacité sont limitées. Dans cette thèse, nous avons mesuré les compétences langagières, mathématiques, exécutives et sociales d’enfants d’une école maternelle, repartis aléatoirement entre des classes appliquant la pédagogie Montessori ou une pédagogie conventionnelle. Nous avons suivi leurs progrès au cours des trois années de l’école maternelle (étude longitudinale) et avons comparé les performances des enfants en fin de Grande Section (étude transversale). Nous avons également élaboré une mesure pour évaluer objectivement la qualité d’implémentation de la pédagogie Montessori dans cette école, situé dans un quartier défavorisé. Nos résultats ne montrent pas de différences entre les groupes dans les domaines des mathématiques, des compétences exécutives et des compétences sociales. Cependant, les enfants issus des classes Montessori avaient de meilleures performances en lecture que les enfants issus des classes conventionnelles en fin de Grande Section. La pédagogie Montessori apparaît donc comme adaptée à l’apprentissage de la lecture chez le jeune enfant
Taking a test online rather than on paper is becoming increasingly common. However, there has been little research directly addressing the testing mode (taking a test on paper or online) in chemistry courses, particularly when students take multiple practice tests before an exam. Two studies were conducted to investigate student performance on two proctored general chemistry practice tests as a function of the testing mode. Data were collected in 2013 (Study 1) and again in 2015 (Study 2). The participants were 422 undergraduate students (Study 1 N = 207 and Study 2 N = 215) from a first-semester general chemistry course at a midwestern university. In each study students took two practice tests. Each test included 17 algorithmic, 5 conceptual, and 2 definition questions and was administered on computer or paper. The mode combination of Test 1–Test 2 identified the four conditions: Computer–Computer, Computer–Paper, Paper–Computer, and Paper–Paper. The results show minor differences between online and paper modes. In particular, no significant difference was found between Computer–Paper and Paper–Paper conditions. This pattern suggests that online testing is a promising alternative to the traditional paper-and-pencil mode most often used in chemistry.
This chapter reviews past and current research on the spacing effect with respect to theoretical explanations that have been offered to account for the phenomenon, recent research on optimal spacing gaps, and results from category induction tasks showing that spacing can benefit the abstraction of concepts. The role of spacing in metacognitive awareness and regulation is also discussed. Finally, the ever-growing number of studies investigating spacing in authentic educational environments is reviewed, providing fairly strong and consistent evidence that spacing is an effective approach for enhancing students' learning of knowledge and skills acquired in their courses.
The focus here is on Ebbinghaus’s sole measure of retention: savings during relearning. The article is divided into four sections: (a) the historical perspective surrounding Ebbinghaus’s use of savings and relearning (including a fundamental difference between Ebbinghaus’s conception of memory and that of his contemporaries such as William James), (b) potential problems with savings as a measure of retention, (c) recent findings based on savings and relearning, and (d) applications of savings and relearning.
We argue herein that typical training procedures are far from optimal. The goat of training in real-world settings is, or should be, to support two aspects of posttraining performance: (a) the level of performance in the long term and (b) the capability to transfer that training to related tasks and altered contexts. The implicit or explicit assumption of those persons responsible for training is that the procedures that enhance performance and speed improvement during training will necessarily achieve these two goals. However, a variety of experiments on motor and verbal learning indicate that this assumption is often incorrect. Manipulations that maximize performance during training can be detrimental in the long term; conversely, manipulations that degrade the speed of acquisition can support the long-term goals of training. The fact that there are parallel findings in the motor and verbal domains suggests that principles of considerable generality can be deduced to upgrade training procedures.
Although we know that emotional events enjoy a privileged status in our memories, we still have much to learn about how emotional memories are processed, stored, and how they change over time. Here we show a positive association between REM sleep and the selective consolidation of central, negative aspects of complex scenes. Moreover, we show that the placement of sleep is critical for this selective emotional memory benefit. When testing occurred 24 h post-encoding, subjects who slept soon after learning (24 h Sleep First group) had superior memory for emotional objects compared to subjects whose sleep was delayed for 16 h post-encoding following a full day of wakefulness (24 h Wake First group). However, this increase in memory for emotional objects corresponded with a decrease in memory for the neutral backgrounds on which these objects were placed. Furthermore, memory for emotional objects in the 24 h Sleep First group was comparable to performance after just a 12 h delay containing a night of sleep, suggesting that sleep soon after learning selectively stabilizes emotional memory. These results suggest that the sleeping brain preserves in long-term memory only what is emotionally salient and perhaps most adaptive to remember.
The literature on spacing effects is vast, but no prior research has examined the effects of initial spacing when students learn to criterion and then subsequently relearn items. In addition, minimal research has evaluated the costs associated with spaced practice as well as the benefits. Accordingly, in the current research, we examined the benefits and costs of initial spacing using Bahrick's (1979) method of successive relearning. Across 3 experiments, 567 students practiced key term definitions via test-restudy practice until items were correctly recalled 1 or 3 times during initial learning. Practice trials during initial learning were either massed or spaced (including relatively longer lags in all experiments as well as intermediate lags in Experiment 1). All students then relearned items in 2-3 subsequent relearning sessions (across experiments, almost 40,000 short-answer recall responses were collected and hand scored). The benefits of initial spacing were measured by interim cued recall tests and a final test administered days or weeks after relearning, and costs were measured by total practice time across sessions. A consistent qualitative pattern emerged: The benefits of initial spacing were substantial prior to relearning but were significantly attenuated after relearning. Moreover, the costs associated with achieving criterion via spaced practice during initial learning were also substantially attenuated by faster relearning in subsequent sessions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Two experiments were performed in an attempt to relate sleep stages with overnight memory of consonant trigrams and paired-associates. In Exp. 1, a 20-min. learning task before sleep did not alter sleep patterns of a group of high school and college students. Further, neither delta sleep nor REM sleep nor their interaction reliably correlated with recall in the morning. In Exp. 2, the effect of pharmacological alteration of the sleep pattern was assessed. Despite a large suppression of REM sleep and concomitant elevation of stage 2, recall and relearning in the morning were not different from non-drug values. These results indicate that no sleep stage is uniquely favorable or unfavorable to verbal memory.
Used 2 methods—successive relearning and cross-sectional adjustment—to examine processes involved in the maintenance of knowledge. Successive relearning is illustrated in a laboratory study with 90 undergraduates; English–Spanish word pairs were periodically relearned, and the intersession interval was varied from a few seconds to 30 days. It was found that indefinite access to the acquired information remained highly probable if the retraining interval did not exceed the access interval. Cross-sectional adjustment is a nonlaboratory method designed to investigate the acquisition and maintenance of complex knowledge systems under ecologically realistic conditions. The method is illustrated in a study with 275 university students and 576 alumni in which maintenance of knowledge of a city was found to be related to the frequency, recency, duration, and distribution of visits during a 46-yr retention interval. Statistical and interpretive procedures for each method are detailed. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The literature on testing effects is vast but supports surprisingly few prescriptive conclusions for how to schedule practice to achieve both durable and efficient learning. Key limitations are that few studies have examined the effects of initial learning criterion or the effects of relearning, and no prior research has examined the combined effects of these 2 factors. Across 3 experiments, 533 students learned conceptual material via retrieval practice with restudy. Items were practiced until they were correctly recalled from 1 to 4 times during an initial learning session and were then practiced again to 1 correct recall in 1-5 subsequent relearning sessions (across experiments, more than 100,000 short-answer recall responses were collected and hand-scored). Durability was measured by cued recall and rate of relearning 1-4 months after practice, and efficiency was measured by total practice trials across sessions. A consistent qualitative pattern emerged: The effects of initial learning criterion and relearning were subadditive, such that the effects of initial learning criterion were strong prior to relearning but then diminished as relearning increased. Relearning had pronounced effects on long-term retention with a relatively minimal cost in terms of additional practice trials. On the basis of the overall patterns of durability and efficiency, our prescriptive conclusion for students is to practice recalling concepts to an initial criterion of 3 correct recalls and then to relearn them 3 times at widely spaced intervals.
Sleep has been identified as a state that optimizes the consolidation of newly acquired information in memory, depending on the specific conditions of learning and the timing of sleep. Consolidation during sleep promotes both quantitative and qualitative changes of memory representations. Through specific patterns of neuromodulatory activity and electric field potential oscillations, slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep support system consolidation and synaptic consolidation, respectively. During SWS, slow oscillations, spindles and ripples - at minimum cholinergic activity - coordinate the re-activation and redistribution of hippocampus-dependent memories to neocortical sites, whereas during REM sleep, local increases in plasticity-related immediate-early gene activity - at high cholinergic and theta activity - might favour the subsequent synaptic consolidation of memories in the cortex.
The function of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is still unknown. One prevailing hypothesis suggests that REM sleep is important in processing memory traces. Here, using positron emission tomography (PET) and regional cerebral blood flow measurements, we show that waking experience influences regional brain activity during subsequent sleep. Several brain areas activated during the execution of a serial reaction time task during wakefulness were significantly more active during REM sleep in subjects previously trained on the task than in non-trained subjects. These results support the hypothesis that memory traces are processed during REM sleep in humans.
An English language self-assessment Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire is presented and evaluated against individual differences in the circadian vatiation of oral temperature. 48 subjects falling into Morning, Evening and Intermediate type categories regularly took their temperature. Circadian peak time were identified from the smoothed temperature curves of each subject. Results showed that Morning types and a significantly earlier peak time than Evening types and tended to have a higher daytime temperature and lower post peak temperature. The Intermediate type had temperatures between those of the other groups. Although no significant differences in sleep lengths were found between the three types, Morning types retired and arose significantly earlier than Evening types. Whilst these time significatly correlated with peak time, the questionnaire showed a higher peak time correlation. Although sleep habits are an important déterminant of peak time there are other contibutory factors, and these appear to be partly covered by the questionnaire. Although the questionnaire appears to be valid, further evaluation using a wider subject population is required.
The development and use of a new scale, the Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), is described. This is a simple, self-administered questionnaire which is shown to provide a measurement of the subject's general level of daytime sleepiness. One hundred and eighty adults answered the ESS, including 30 normal men and women as controls and 150 patients with a range of sleep disorders. They rated the chances that they would doze off or fall asleep when in eight different situations commonly encountered in daily life. Total ESS scores significantly distinguished normal subjects from patients in various diagnostic groups including obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia. ESS scores were significantly correlated with sleep latency measured during the multiple sleep latency test and during overnight polysomnography. In patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome ESS scores were significantly correlated with the respiratory disturbance index and the minimum SaO2 recorded overnight. ESS scores of patients who simply snored did not differ from controls.
Converging evidence and new research methodologies from across the neurosciences permit the neuroscientific study of the role
of sleep in off-line memory reprocessing, as well as the nature and function of dreaming. Evidence supports a role for sleep
in the consolidation of an array of learning and memory tasks. In addition, new methodologies allow the experimental manipulation
of dream content at sleep onset, permitting an objective and scientific study of this dream formation and a renewed search
for the possible functions of dreaming and the biological processes subserving it.
The authors performed a meta-analysis of the distributed practice effect to illuminate the effects of temporal variables that have been neglected in previous reviews. This review found 839 assessments of distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles. Effects of spacing (consecutive massed presentations vs. spaced learning episodes) and lag (less spaced vs. more spaced learning episodes) were examined, as were expanding interstudy interval (ISI) effects. Analyses suggest that ISI and retention interval operate jointly to affect final-test retention; specifically, the ISI producing maximal retention increased as retention interval increased. Areas needing future research and theoretical implications are discussed.
Sleep replay of awake experience in the cortex and hippocampus has been proposed to be involved in memory consolidation. However, whether temporally structured replay occurs in the cortex and whether the replay events in the two areas are related are unknown. Here we studied multicell spiking patterns in both the visual cortex and hippocampus during slow-wave sleep in rats. We found that spiking patterns not only in the cortex but also in the hippocampus were organized into frames, defined as periods of stepwise increase in neuronal population activity. The multicell firing sequences evoked by awake experience were replayed during these frames in both regions. Furthermore, replay events in the sensory cortex and hippocampus were coordinated to reflect the same experience. These results imply simultaneous reactivation of coherent memory traces in the cortex and hippocampus during sleep that may contribute to or reflect the result of the memory consolidation process.
Research on retrieval-induced forgetting has demonstrated that retrieving some information from memory can cause the forgetting of other information in memory. Here, the authors report research on the relearning of items that have been subjected to retrieval-induced forgetting. Participants studied a list of category- exemplar pairs, underwent a series of retrieval-practice and relearning trials, and, finally, were tested on the initially studied pairs. The final recall of non-relearned items exhibited a cumulative effect of retrieval-induced forgetting such that the size of the effect increased with each block of retrieval practice. Of most interest, and very surprising from a common-sense standpoint, items that were relearned benefited more from that relearning if they had previously been forgotten. The results offer insights into the nature and durability of retrieval-induced forgetting and provide additional evidence that forgetting is an enabler--rather than a disabler--of future learning.
Learning is often considered complete when a student can produce the correct answer to a question. In our research, students in one condition learned foreign language vocabulary words in the standard paradigm of repeated study-test trials. In three other conditions, once a student had correctly produced the vocabulary item, it was repeatedly studied but dropped from further testing, repeatedly tested but dropped from further study, or dropped from both study and test. Repeated studying after learning had no effect on delayed recall, but repeated testing produced a large positive effect. In addition, students' predictions of their performance were uncorrelated with actual performance. The results demonstrate the critical role of retrieval practice in consolidating learning and show that even university students seem unaware of this fact.
Publisher Summary
This chapter reviews the research on the effects of repetition conducted in the laboratory. Repetition is one of the most powerful variables affecting memory. The chapter discusses experiments called the “method of memory judgments.” In this technique, a list of items is presented, and the subject is then presented with each test item and asked to judge from memory some aspect of its presentation in the list. Judgments of recency, frequency, exposure duration, list membership, input modality, spacing, and serial position have all been used, singly and in combination. Judgments reveal much more about the richness of information encoded in memory than can be inferred from more traditional recall and recognition measures. Memory judgments have been particularly revealing where effects of repetition on memory are concerned. The chapter examines how frequency or number of occurrences is represented in memory. It reviews research on effects on memory of the spacing of repetitions and presents evidence on the role of repetitions as retrieval cues.
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Education ideally should induce learning that lasts for years and more. A wealth of research indicates that, to achieve long-lasting retention, information must be practiced and/or tested repeatedly, with repeated practice well distributed over time. In this paper we discuss the behavioral, neuroimaging and neurophysiological findings related to the effect of distributed practice and testing as well as the resulting theoretical accounts. Distributed practice and testing appear to be powerful learning tools. We consider implications of these learning principles for educational practice.
Over more than a century of research has established the fact that sleep benefits the retention of memory. In this review we aim to comprehensively cover the field of "sleep and memory" research by providing a historical perspective on concepts and a discussion of more recent key findings. Whereas initial theories posed a passive role for sleep enhancing memories by protecting them from interfering stimuli, current theories highlight an active role for sleep in which memories undergo a process of system consolidation during sleep. Whereas older research concentrated on the role of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, recent work has revealed the importance of slow-wave sleep (SWS) for memory consolidation and also enlightened some of the underlying electrophysiological, neurochemical, and genetic mechanisms, as well as developmental aspects in these processes. Specifically, newer findings characterize sleep as a brain state optimizing memory consolidation, in opposition to the waking brain being optimized for encoding of memories. Consolidation originates from reactivation of recently encoded neuronal memory representations, which occur during SWS and transform respective representations for integration into long-term memory. Ensuing REM sleep may stabilize transformed memories. While elaborated with respect to hippocampus-dependent memories, the concept of an active redistribution of memory representations from networks serving as temporary store into long-term stores might hold also for non-hippocampus-dependent memory, and even for nonneuronal, i.e., immunological memories, giving rise to the idea that the offline consolidation of memory during sleep represents a principle of long-term memory formation established in quite different physiological systems.
Many studies have shown that memory is enhanced when study sessions are spaced apart rather than massed. This spacing effect has been shown to have a lasting benefit to long-term memory when the study phase session follows the encoding session by 24 hours. Using a spacing paradigm we examined the impact of sleep and spacing gaps on long-term declarative memory for Swahili-English word pairs by including four spacing delay gaps (massed, 12 hours same-day, 12 hours overnight, and 24 hours). Results showed that a 12-hour spacing gap that includes sleep promotes long-term memory retention similar to the 24-hour gap. The findings support the importance of sleep to the long-term benefit of the spacing effect.
The brain does not retain all the information it encodes in a day. Much is forgotten, and of those memories retained, their subsequent evolution can follow any of a number of pathways. Emerging data makes clear that sleep is a compelling candidate for performing many of these operations. But how does the sleeping brain know which information to preserve and which to forget? What should sleep do with that information it chooses to keep? For information that is retained, sleep can integrate it into existing memory networks, look for common patterns and distill overarching rules, or simply stabilize and strengthen the memory exactly as it was learned. We suggest such 'memory triage' lies at the heart of a sleep-dependent memory processing system that selects new information, in a discriminatory manner, and assimilates it into the brain's vast armamentarium of evolving knowledge, helping guide each organism through its own, unique life.
The retrieval of a memory places it into a plastic state, the result of which is that the memory can be disrupted or even enhanced by experimental treatment. This phenomenon has been conceptualised within a framework of memories being reactivated and then reconsolidated in repeated rounds of cellular processing. The reconsolidation phase has been seized upon as crucial for the understanding of memory stability and, more recently, as a potential therapeutic target in the treatment of disorders such as post-traumatic stress and drug addiction. However, little is known about the reactivation process, or what might be the adaptive function of retrieval-induced plasticity. Reconsolidation has long been proposed to mediate memory updating, but only recently has this hypothesis been supported experimentally. Here, the adaptive function of memory reconsolidation is explored in more detail, with a strong emphasis on its role in updating memories to maintain their relevance.
Memories are dynamic and the reactivation of memories via re-exposure to training stimuli can cause the destabilization of a memory trace. This paper shows that the subsequent reconsolidation of this memory can modify the strength of contextual fear memory during learning. Memories are dynamic, rather than static, in nature. The reactivation of a memory through re-exposure to salient training stimuli results in its destabilization, necessitating a restabilization process known as reconsolidation, a disruption of which leads to amnesia. I found that one normal function of hippocampal memory reconsolidation in rats is to modify the strength of a contextual-fear memory as a result of further learning.
Retention of nonsense syllables was tested in two groups of Ss: those having initial learning in the morning and those having initial learning at night immediately before sleep. These groups were subdivided so that recall was tested either 8 or 24 hrs after initial learning. As Jenkins and Dallenbach first demonstrated, retention was superior after 8 hrs for Ss when learned at night compared to those who learned in the morning. Retention with night learning was equal after 24 hrs to that observed after 8 hrs. Surprisingly, retention scores after morning learning were superior after 24 hrs to those observed after 8 hrs. Some possible interpretations of this result are advanced.
Eight subjects were kept awake and active overnight in a sleep lab isolated from environmental time cues. Ambulatory EEG and EOG were continuously recorded and sleepiness ratings carried out every two hours as was a short EEG test session with eyes open for 5 min and closed for 2 min. The EEG was subjected to spectral analysis and the EOG was visually scored for slow rolling eye movements (SEM). Intrusions of SEM and of alpha and theta power density during waking, open-eyed activity strongly differentiated between high and low subjective sleepiness (the differentiation was poorer for closed eyes) and the mean intraindividual correlations between subjective and objective sleepiness were very high. Still, the covariation was curvilinear; physiological indices of sleepiness did not occur reliably until subjective perceptions fell between "sleepy" and "extremely sleepy-fighting sleep"; i.e. physiological changes due to sleepiness are not likely to occur until extreme sleepiness is encountered. The results support the notion that ambulatory EEG/EOG changes may be used to quantify sleepiness.
Despite the prevalence of sleep complaints among psychiatric patients, few questionnaires have been specifically designed to measure sleep quality in clinical populations. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) is a self-rated questionnaire which assesses sleep quality and disturbances over a 1-month time interval. Nineteen individual items generate seven "component" scores: subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleeping medication, and daytime dysfunction. The sum of scores for these seven components yields one global score. Clinical and clinimetric properties of the PSQI were assessed over an 18-month period with "good" sleepers (healthy subjects, n = 52) and "poor" sleepers (depressed patients, n = 54; sleep-disorder patients, n = 62). Acceptable measures of internal homogeneity, consistency (test-retest reliability), and validity were obtained. A global PSQI score greater than 5 yielded a diagnostic sensitivity of 89.6% and specificity of 86.5% (kappa = 0.75, p less than 0.001) in distinguishing good and poor sleepers. The clinimetric and clinical properties of the PSQI suggest its utility both in psychiatric clinical practice and research activities.
The focus here is on Ebbinghaus's sole measure of retention: savings during relearning. The article is divided into four sections: (a) the historical perspective surrounding Ebbinghaus's use of savings and relearning (including a fundamental difference between Ebbinghaus's conception of memory and that of his contemporaries such as William James), (b) potential problems with savings as a measure of retention, (c) recent findings based on savings and relearning, and (d) applications of savings and relearning.
Traditional theories of forgetting are wedded to the notion that cue-overload interference procedures (often involving the A-B, A-C list-learning paradigm) capture the most important elements of forgetting in everyday life. However, findings from a century of work in psychology, psychopharmacology, and neuroscience converge on the notion that such procedures may pertain mainly to forgetting in the laboratory and that everyday forgetting is attributable to an altogether different form of interference. According to this idea, recently formed memories that have not yet had a chance to consolidate are vulnerable to the interfering force of mental activity and memory formation (even if the interfering activity is not similar to the previously learned material). This account helps to explain why sleep, alcohol, and benzodiazepines all improve memory for a recently learned list, and it is consistent with recent work on the variables that affect the induction and maintenance of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus.
Consolidation is the progressive postacquisition stabilization of long-term memory. The term is commonly used to refer to two types of processes: synaptic consolidation, which is accomplished within the first minutes to hours after learning and occurs in all memory systems studied so far; and system consolidation, which takes much longer, and in which memories that are initially dependent upon the hippocampus undergo reorganization and may become hippocampal-independent. The textbook account of consolidation is that for any item in memory, consolidation starts and ends just once. Recently, a heated debate has been revitalized on whether this is indeed the case, or, alternatively, whether memories become labile and must undergo some form of renewed consolidation every time they are activated. This debate focuses attention on fundamental issues concerning the nature of the memory trace, its maturation, persistence, retrievability, and modifiability.
In rats, the firing sequences observed in hippocampal ensembles during spatial learning are replayed during subsequent sleep, suggesting a role for posttraining sleep periods in the offline processing of spatial memories. Here, using regional cerebral blood flow measurements, we show that, in humans, hippocampal areas that are activated during route learning in a virtual town are likewise activated during subsequent slow wave sleep. Most importantly, we found that the amount of hippocampal activity expressed during slow wave sleep positively correlates with the improvement of performance in route retrieval on the next day. These findings suggest that learning-dependent modulation in hippocampal activity during human sleep reflects the offline processing of recent episodic and spatial memory traces, which eventually leads to the plastic changes underlying the subsequent improvement in performance.
- Ebbinghaus H.