Researchers Camilla Gilmore and Jayne Spiller at the Center for Mathematical Cognition, University of Loughborough, U.K., have studied regarding the intersection of sleep and mathematical memory, discovered that sleep after learning improves recall.
In their paper, “Positive effect of sleep on recall of multiplication facts,” published in Royal Society Open Science, the duo investigated whether learning complex multiplication complications before sleep would benefit recall compared to learning them during wakefulness to recognize how sleep affects the memory of mathematical facts, specifically multiplication tables.
The study involved 77 adult individuals aged 18 to 40 from the U.K. Each individual learned difficult multiplication problems in two conditions: before sleep (sleep learning) and in the morning (wake learning). Individuals who participated, completed online sessions where they learned new complex multiplication problems or were tested on previously learned material. Learning sessions involved both untimed and timed trials.
Participants had better memory in the sleep learning condition than in the wake learning condition, with a moderate effect size. Even though participants had different learning abilities, the sleep learning condition showed a beneficial effect on memory, with a smaller effect size.
Mathematical talent of the participants, as measured by accuracy in simple multiplication problems, was related with learning scores but not with the extent of sleep-related benefit for memory.
The study shows the possible educational consequences of leveraging sleep-related benefits for learning. The positive effect of sleep on the recall of complex multiplication problems could be mainly useful for children learning multiplication tables or other math memorization skills, though it would be interesting to see how well a bedtime math lesson would be received.
While the authors recommend that sleep conferred the additional benefit on memory compared with learning during the daytime, the mechanisms by which encoding takes place are probably enforced by a lack of continued external inputs. The authors mentioned that this limitation of a lack of other comparative stimuli with a similar complexity of encoding to conclusively demonstrate in their study the specificity of sleep-related benefits on memory.
Asleep, the brain may be locking in the new learning since it has no other competition. In contrast, an awake brain is challenged with conversations, media reading or viewing and even other classes packed with learning material. This competition for memory encoding in the waking brain could be the reason of the memory differences seen in the study, though outside of recommending multi-hour meditation sessions between classes the likelihood of finding an alternative to sleep on memory may be limited.
