Some basic rules of effective learning, informed by psychology, are already well established. Testing yourself and relearning any forgotten items is beneficial, especially so when this is done after a sufficient delay, rather than “cramming”. Sleep too is known to be incredibly helpful for consolidating new memories. Now a study in Psychological Science has built upon these insights, showing how interleaving two study periods with sleep leads to particularly efficient and long-lasting learning.
Stéphanie Mazza and her colleagues assigned 60 French participants to three different study conditions. All three groups faced the same initial challenge – they had to learn the French translation of 16 Swahili words. During this initial session, the word pairs were presented one at a time, then participants were tested at recalling the correct French word for each Swahili word. In cases where they were wrong or couldn’t remember, they were given the correct answer. This process was repeated until the participant had successfully recalled all the word pairs.
The group who studied, slept, then restudied showed better initial test performance in the relearning session, and their relearning of forgotten items at this session was quicker, as compared with the group who’d studied in the morning then had their relearning session in the evening. Moreover, the study/sleep/relearn group outperformed the study/awake/relearn group both at the one-week retest and the six-month re-test.
Whereas the study/sleep/relearn group showed virtually no forgetting over one week, the study/awake/relearn group showed significant forgetting (roughly four to five items), equivalent to the forgetting also shown by the control group who had studied, slept, then simply had another test with no further relearning. The study/sleep/relearn group also showed superior performance to the other groups at the six-month test.
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Source material from British Psychological Society