{"id":4932,"date":"2019-09-01T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-09-01T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4932"},"modified":"2019-08-26T14:42:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T19:42:07","slug":"sleep-is-essential-and-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/sleep-is-essential-and-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleep Is Essential. And, COMPLICATED."},"content":{"rendered":"

My cat and I enjoy blogging about sleep, for the obvious reason that sleep is delicious.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And, of course, essential for learning.<\/p>\n

Most often, I’ve written about the importance of high school start times<\/a>. Occasionally, I write about naps as well. For instance, a recent study in Brazil found that in-school naps<\/a> promoted learning. (My cat was pleased, but not surprised.)<\/p>\n

I’ve come across two studies recently that help us think about sleep (and its relatives) in new ways.<\/p>\n

Study #1: Memory Benefits of “Brief Wakeful Resting”<\/h2>\n

We’ve got lots of research showing that naps promote learning. Heck: even a 6-minute nap<\/a> enhances subsequent learning. (Not joking.)<\/p>\n

Let’s push the envelope on this question. If a six minute nap<\/em> helps learners remember, perhaps actual sleep<\/em> isn’t essential. Perhaps a period of mental down time<\/strong> might do the job.<\/p>\n

For instance: maybe a ten minute period of\u00a0“brief wakeful resting”<\/strong> might be enough to promote better learning.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, in this study<\/a>, participants remembered a story better if they “reste[ed] quietly with their eyes closed in the darkened testing room for ten minutes” than if they engaged in active cognitive task.<\/p>\n

In fact, they remembered the story better\u00a0a week later.\u00a0<\/em>In other words: this benefit wasn’t merely temporary, but lasting.<\/p>\n

The teaching implications here are intriguing.<\/p>\n

Should we build in brief intervals of “wakeful rest” after complex lessons? Should we redesign school schedules to allow such breaks?<\/p>\n

At present, we don’t really know–because this research was conducted with 70-year-olds<\/em>. Now, I have nothing against 70-year-olds. Some of my best parents have been in their 70s. But, few of us teach<\/em> 70-year-olds.<\/p>\n

So, I hope that this research will be tried with younger learners. Perhaps we might find a whole new way to organize the school day.<\/p>\n

Study #2: The Best Way to Sleep Too Little<\/h2>\n

You read that right. Is there a better way to get insufficient sleep?<\/p>\n

Of course, we know that adolescents simply don’t sleep enough. (Did I mention high-school start times?)<\/p>\n

We’ve got lots of research showing that they benefit from\u00a0more sleep.\u00a0<\/em>For instance, we know that they learn more if they get afternoon naps.<\/p>\n

But: what if we could keep the total amount of sleep<\/em> constant, and change the sleep schedule<\/em>? Is there a better way to get too little sleep?<\/p>\n

Researchers tested this question<\/a> in Singapore. They had one<\/strong> group of adolescents get 6.5 hours of night-time sleep<\/em> during the week, and 9 hours of sleep over the weekend.<\/p>\n

In other words: like many teens, they’re just not sleeping enough on school nights.<\/p>\n

Researchers had a second<\/strong> group of students sleep 5 hours at night and take a 1.5 hour nap<\/em> during the day.<\/p>\n

That is: they also got 6.5 hours of sleep–but that total amount of sleep was divided into night-time sleep and a nap.<\/p>\n

Did that make a difference?<\/p>\n

Results, and Implications<\/h2>\n

Sure enough, the group that slept 5 hours at night and 1.5 hours during the day showed superior cognitive function, compared to the group that slept 6.5 hours straight through at night.<\/p>\n

More specifically, they did better on visual learning<\/em> tasks, and on factual learning<\/em> tasks.<\/p>\n

In other words: they had a less-than-optimal<\/em> amount of sleep. But, they had a better schedule<\/em> for their less-than-optimal-sleep.<\/p>\n

What are the implications?<\/p>\n

My own view is: this study gives us reason to believe that afternoon naps will benefit adolescents.<\/p>\n

Either teens will get more sleep–which will benefit them.<\/p>\n

Or, even if they foolishly sleep less at night knowing they can nap during the day, this split-sleep schedule will still help them learn.<\/p>\n

That’s as close to “win\/win” as we get with teenagers and sleep.<\/p>\n

So, what’s next?<\/p>\n

In my experience, most teens currently use afternoons to practice their extra-curriculars: sports, or theater, or debate. That is: if we encourage them to do more afternoon napping, we necessarily leave them less time to do these other things.<\/p>\n

For this reason, I hope that soon we’ll see research comparing students who nap to students who exercise.<\/p>\n

Information about those bigger-picture trade-offs could give schools, teachers, and parents helpful–and practical–guidance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent sleep research offers intriguing insights and opportunities for sleep and learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,10],"class_list":["post-4932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-adolescence","tag-sleep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4932"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4938,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions\/4938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}