A study has shown that when we learn new information and then fall asleep, we facilitate the implantation of this information in the long term memory. That is, sleeping after studying increases the chances that we will remember the material studied.
To conduct the experiment, the psychologist Jessica Payne of the University of Notre Dame 207 students participated. The experiment consisted of remembering the meaning of a series of words that were new to them.
A division of all participants was made into 2 groups. Group 1 was to learn the words at 9 in the morning. Group 2 would do the same at 9 at night.
The next phase of the experiment would take place 12 hours later of learning. In this phase, each group had to remember what they had learned 12 hours before..
The participants in Group 2 showed a much higher recall index than Group 1. That is, those students who had learned the words at 9 p.m. and then went to sleep rthey remembered the meaning of words better 12 hours later.
In short, the declarative memory It is one that refers to facts and events. This type of memory can be divided into semantic memory (what do things mean - "That man dressed in blue is a policeman") Y episodic memory (when things happen, "This morning I parked in the next street"). In our day to day we make continuous use of both types of memory without hardly realizing it.
According to the researchers, the Group 1 subjects (those who had done the study at 9 a.m.) still had a whole day ahead of them after learning. It is possible that the memory of the words (12 hours later and without having slept yet) was contaminated by the use of the declarative memory for the whole day.
In a later phase of the experiment, they remembered recall 24 hours later of the first study. In this way they ensured that both groups had slept a full night and also had been awake during a normal day. In this case, there were no differences in the number of words remembered and they gave very similar results..
At the risk of being wrong, I draw the following conclusions from this study:
It doesn't really matter what time of day you decide to study. Whether you study in the morning or at night, the amount of material remembered will decrease as the days go by. There are several ways to prevent this from happening and you can better remember what you have studied.
Better to learn new material the night before. Let's say that today is Sunday and tomorrow morning I have an 8-topic exam. During the last weeks I have been studying the first 7 topics, however I have not had time to start with 8. In that case (and always according to the experiment) it will be better to get to the last topic on Sunday night ( from 7 to 11 for example).
Then I will go to sleep and tomorrow morning I will have the freshest contents in my memory. Of course, the ideal would have been to study in the morning and do a review again in the afternoon / evening, but we are talking about a case in which we are short of time and we have to choose the best moment beneficial and productive for our learning.
I think a lot of people already do this innately. That is, we are aware of the fragility that have the new materials in memory. For this reason we prefer to learn them as close as possible to the exam date, during the night before or even early in the morning to study the morning of the exam..
Everyone must find their own answer to this question. On the one hand, studying in the morning has the problem analyzed in this study. On the other hand, studying at night after a day of work is not easy either since we will be tired and our attention span will be less..
I think the best thing in these cases is to do testing by trial / error to know ourselves and observe when we learn best.
The objective data regarding the amount of material remembered are important. However, we must not forget our subjective sensations, that is, how we feel depending on the moment in which we are studying.
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