Article: Sleep, Wakeful Rest, Spacing, and Memory… 

by Walter Milner, Instructional Designer IV, Learning and Educational Center

As educators, we are often exploring the science of how learning works, and how teaching can be most effective. Naturally, we want our students to absorb and retain information at the highest rate possible. It is therefore valuable to explore the science of memory and retention of information. When do the things we learn become encoded in our memory and how can we maximize retention through our understanding of how the brain works? 

It turns out that the brain needs to be in a period of restfulness in order to have the capacity to consolidate new information. When we learn things during the day, they are consolidated later when the brain is resting, often later that night when we are asleep. Studies have also shown, however, that this may also happen during periods of wakeful rest (Craig & Dewar, 2018; Gottselig et al., 2004; Pyke et al., 2020). Understanding this phenomenon can be useful when applied to teaching, especially when teaching involves disseminating a lot of information. Finding ways to give students breaks centered around wakeful rest, encouraging healthy sleep habits, and intentional spacing during learning may help increase consolidation along with both short-term and long-term retention of new material. 

Sleep 

As humans, we spend a third of our lives sleeping, and we evolved so that sleep plays a crucial role in proper brain function (Raven et al., 2018). Brain function, including processing and storing information is dependent on strengthening communication between neurons, which is dependent on synaptic strength and synaptic plasticity – the ability to change and strengthen synaptic connections (Cooke, 2006; Raven et al., 2018; Zucker, 1989). It is difficult for our brain to consolidate and strengthen memory when it is busy taking in new information. When the hippocampus is not busy, it uses this opportunity to promote synaptic consolidation, strengthening memory and consolidating recently acquired information (Drosopoulos et al., 2005; Dumay, 2015; Raven et al., 2018). This happens not only during a nighttime of sleep, but even during short naps (Tucker et al., 2020). 

Sleep plays a crucial role in strengthening different types of memory, including long-term memory such as “declarative memory” (Dumay, 2015; Ellenbogen et al., 2006), and short-term memory such as “working memory,” which is important for problem-solving and reasoning (Kuriyama et al., 2008). Sleep also has been demonstrated to improve skill learning across a variety of skill areas – including visual, auditory, and motor (Kuriyama et al., 2008). In one study, subjects were trained during the day and tested ten hours later that day, as well as the next morning after a night of sleep. Subjects showed no significant improvement after ten hours of wakefulness, but significant improvement, 40% in one group, after a night of post-training sleep (Kuriyama et al., 2008). This was shown to be the case regardless of whether the period of sleep or period of wakefulness came first, showing that improvement in working memory can be facilitated by a period of post-training physiological sleep (Kuriyama et al., 2008). 

As educators, this is important not only to widen our understanding of how memories are consolidated and strengthened, but also to encourage us to promote healthy sleep habits in our students (and ourselves). Sleep deprivation has been shown to impair cognitive processes and disrupt proper information processing in the hippocampus (Raven et al., 2018). Lack of sleep impairs the synaptic plasticity that is crucial for memory formation, and even five hours of sleep deprivation has been shown to result in significant weakening of neural connectivity (Raven et al., 2018).  

Wakeful Rest 

While we can’t have students take a nap in the middle of learning, wakeful rest has been shown to benefit memory consolidation and retention in very similar ways to sleep. Wakeful rest refers to a few minutes of rest, where a person is awake but not actively engaged in any activity and with minimal sensory stimulation.  

Research shows that people remember more new information if they engage in a period of wakeful rest after the learning event, compared to if they engage in an activity (Craig & Dewar, 2018; Gottselig et al., 2004; Pyke et al., 2020). The improvement in memory is similar to the benefits gained from sleep (Craig & Dewar, 2018; Gottselig et al., 2004). People who engaged in ten minutes of rest after learning new material remembered it better than those who engaged in ten minutes of a task not related to the learning material (Craig & Dewar, 2018).  

In one study, a group of non-musicians were given sets of five-note patterns to learn on a digital keyboard. They practiced the patterns for thirty-minute practice blocks, as fast and accurately as possible, with thirty second breaks in between each practice block. Participants were divided into groups, some of which were directed to take five-minute breaks between certain blocks, and some which did not take any breaks. The groups that engaged in the short breaks between practice blocks showed improvement immediately after the five-minute break. Further, all participants were retested the next day, and those who had engaged in the short five-minute break showed the greatest overnight gains. This suggests that a short period of wakeful rest during learning strengthens the gains that will also come during a subsequent period of sleep. Finally, participants who engaged in short rest breaks were able to maintain improvement during the subsequent practice blocks and those who did not began to show decreases in improvement after three practice blocks (Cash, 2009). 

Wakeful rest has also been shown to improve long-term memory and retention of at least some types of information. A few minutes of rest has been shown to improve retention of new memories for at least seven days when it comes to associate and temporal order memory, for example (Craig et al., 2015). It is important to note, however, that this may not be the case for all types of information and for all groups of learners (Martini et al., 2017). 

Another form of wakeful rest, meditation, has also been shown to improve memory, along with its other benefits. Eight weeks of daily meditation for thirteen minutes has been shown to enhance attention as well as working and recognition memory and improved performance on a range of cognitive tasks (Basso et al., 2019). Meditation has also been shown to improve reading comprehension in children (Müller et al., 2021). 

Spacing 

Another technique which lets the brain rest to consolidate information is called “spacing.” This refers to an interval of time that is implemented between learning events of a certain set of information or skill. In other words, if you are teaching something that takes a certain amount of time to teach, the results will be better if you break up the time into spaced intervals rather than teaching it all at once (Kornmeier & Sosic-Vasic, 2012). According to at least some research, the learning can be twice as efficient compared to a learning session with no spacing (Kornmeier & Sosic-Vasic, 2012). Other research shows that more information is retained with both a fifteen-to- thirty-minute spacing delay or a seven-day delay if the student rests quietly in the minutes immediately after learning without engaging in an unrelated task for ten minutes (Craig & Dewar, 2018). This seems to indicate that the amount of time for spacing isn’t the main factor, but rather it is the breaking up of the learning material to allow a period of rest for the brain to consolidate the new information.  

Bringing it Into the Classroom 

How can this information be useful in a classroom setting? For one, you can share information on the importance of healthy sleep habits with your students and encourage them to try and practice them. You can also share research on the benefits of meditation and wakeful rest during learning. When it comes to wakeful rest and spacing, there is an increased opportunity to implement these techniques in a learning environment so that your students will get the most out of what they are learning. If students are learning a large amount of information, or complex information, the data show that they would benefit, in terms of both short and long-term retention of that information, if the instructor pauses for short breaks where the students are encouraged to practice wakeful rest. They should be encouraged to limit any perceptual or cognitive stimulation during the rest period and can even be encouraged to close their eyes. Certainly, they should be discouraged from phone activity or computer activity. Further, if what you are teaching involves a large set of information, it would be beneficial to break the lesson up into smaller chunks and implement an interval of space between them – whether that is a period of minutes or days. If you do this, you can encourage the students to take ten minutes for wakeful rest, and then you can have them take a more traditional break or even have them engage with the material in other ways (a quick activity or self-testing) before moving on to new material. By implementing these techniques, your students should be able to consolidate and retain new information in a more effective way that will benefit their overall learning capabilities.  

 

References 

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Cash, C. D. (2009). Effects of early and late rest intervals on performance and overnight consolidation of a keyboard sequence. Journal of Research in Music Education, 57(3), 252–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429409343470 

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