By: Helen Kim
I think many students here will be interested
in the results of a new study conducted at Lancaster University. Researchers
have found that sleeping on a difficult problem is actually very helpful in
finding its answer.
Details of the study and the results were
published just last week in Memory and
Cognition. The study was conducted on 27 men and 34 women, who were
separated into three groups. First, each group was given a set of simple and
difficult verbal insight problems. Then, the groups had a second attempt at the
problems they could not solve. One group attempted the problems immediately
after the first attempt. Another group began its second attempt after spending
a period of time sleeping. The third group began its second attempt following a
period of time without sleeping.
The results of the study say the group that
spent some time sleeping in between the two attempts solved more difficult
problems than the other two groups. However, the results also showed that sleep
did not affect the number of easy problems solved.
Professor
Padraic Monaghan from Lancaster’s Department of Psychology (Centre for Research
in Human Development and Learning) best summarizes the significance of these
results: "We've known for years that sleep has a profound effect on our
ability to be creative and find new solutions to problems. Our study shows that
this sleep effect is greatest when the problems facing us are difficult. Sleep
appears to help us solve problems by accessing information that is remote to
the initial problem that may not be initially brought to mind. Sleep has been
proposed to 'spread activation' to the solution that is initially distant from
our first attempts at the problem. The advice stemming from this and related
research is to leave a problem aside if you're stuck, and get some sleep if
it's a really difficult problem.”
So to
the sleep-deprived students here at Penn, the next time you have trouble with a
problem set, consider getting some sleep in, and come back when you’re
refreshed and ready!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121012074741.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment