First, you need to learn the material throughout the semester. However, if you are like most college and high school students you procrastinate until the last minute to memorize facts that will at least help you pass the exam. All nighters, with pizza, caffeine, and energy drinks are more the norm than the exception. According to new research, this may not do you as much good as you think.
A study released by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine indicates that once a task has been learned, a little nap may improve your ability to remember the task. A little sleep may help you remember that exam material
A study was conducted by Matthew A. Tucker, PhD, of the Center for Sleep and Cognition and the department of psychiatry at Harvard medical School which proved that a brief non-REM nap, about forty-five minutes, benefits declarative memory performance.
A group of early twenty year-olds, with an average age of 23.3, was trained twice on three very different declarative memory tasks. Of 33 subjects, both male and female, sixteen subjects took a nap and seventeen remained awake. After a short nap, the subjects were tested three hours later on all three declarative memory tasks.
Subjects who napped performed better than those who remained awake during the waiting period between training and exams. Perhaps this means instead of sitting up all night, you should take a nap in between study sessions.
There is a caveat. The non-REM nap benefitted those students who mastered the memory task before going to sleep. That means you still have to learn the material. You still have to study for the exam. At some point, however, you need to sleep, in order to allow your memory to process the information you have been digesting.
Your brain is working to make memory “pathways.” According to Dr. Tucker, “these results suggest that there is a threshold acquisition level that has to be obtained for sleep to optimally process memory.” Want that in terms that will help you excel on tests and exams? Your brain needs some rest in order for the memory to file away those things that you have learned.
That’s right. You have to know and master the course material before sleep does you any good. Dr. Tucker’s research indicates that there has to be some mastery of the task before your brain will “optimally process the memory…The importance of this finding is that sleep may not indiscriminately process all information we acquire during wakefulness, only the information we learn well. ” Sorry, according to Dr. Tucker reading your notes and going to bed doesn’t work either.
According to my own research, learning by osmosis while you sleep does not work. If you sleep with your biology book on your head or under your pillow you will not learn anything.
The good news is that if you learn the material and spend some time studying, a little sleep should give your brain a chance to organize the information. This should improve your recall when exam time comes.
Hence, nix the all nighters. Learn course material as you go, study before an exam, get some rest, and step away from the energy drinks.
