Study Finds Students Will Snooze or Lose

Procrastinators, beware. The 3 a.m. cram-fest may provide a rush, but researchers say the 3 p.m. study session will ultimately return better results.

“If you snooze, you win,” Instructor of Psychiatry Matthew P. Walker counsels. “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice with sleep makes perfect.”

Walker is the author of a study published this week in Nature, which argues that rote memorization occurs most efficiently when there is a gap between the initial attempt to learn and sleep.

The article ran opposite another study, by University of Chicago researchers, which found that sleep helps to recover seemingly lost memories.

The Harvard study divides the process of memorization into three stages.

“Memory consolidation was previously thought to be an arbitrary process by which memory became more stable,” Walker said.

During the first stage, the memorizer is awake.

“After six hours your memory is stabilized. It’s kind of like the save button to register,” Walker explained.

Sleep then enhances the memory. “Finally recalling the memory in the morning allows you to modify it again,” Walker said.

Walker and colleagues had test subjects learn a sequence of finger movements, similar to playing the piano. The subjects were then asked to memorize a second sequence.

When the second attempted memorization directly followed the first, subjects were unable to recall the initial sequence.

“The second sequence interfered with the first. It overwrote the first,” Walker said.

But, when the subject waited six hours before learning the second sequence, there was less of this interference.

“Being awake for that amount of time stabilizes [the memory]. It doesn’t improve it. It just makes it less vulnerable to being lost,” Walker said. “The night of sleep does the enhancing.”

The Chicago study explicates this last stage.

Researchers taught subjects to recognize voices and then tested their recognition after sleeping and not sleeping. Unsurprisingly, they found that sleep is important.

“The average American has 6.7 hours of sleep a night, during the week,” said Kimberly M. Fenn, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and an author of the study. “That has severe effects on cognitive abilities.”

“Cramming for a test is not a good idea,” she said, suggesting “studying less and sleeping more.”

Some students in Loker Commons yesterday seemed to agree. Patty E. Goldhoff ’04 said she tries to defy science.

“I’ll get about three hours of sleep. I cram a lot. In some classes, it’s effective,” she said.

Walker said that his next step will be to take the study to a clinical level. He said that memory consolidation has applications ranging from phobias to post-traumatic stress disorder.