Video transcript –
Lack of sleep impairs reasoning, problem solving and attention to detail. Not only does a good nights sleep address these problems but it is an important part of remembering information too.
In one study 2 groups of students were given a list of unrelated paired words to remember such as “elephant/glass” and “star/ladder”. One group was given the list in the morning and tested 12 hours later in the evening. The other group was given the list in the evening and tested 12 hours later in the morning after sleep. An increase in 20.6% in memory was found in the group that had slept. It seems that declarative memory (that’s remembering facts and information), improves if you sleep on it.
And one study showed that napping for 45-60 minutes after memorising word pairs could significantly improve memory.
Research also tells us that it is probably best to sleep about 3 hours after learning for the best rewards. So if you are learning during the day, try and take a nap or recap a few hours before bed to reap the rewards of sleep consolidated memory.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3413705/#pone.0042191-Wilson1
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074742715000362
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4428077/