It is no secret that sleeping is essential to learning and knowledge acquisition/retention. Nevertheless, sleep is typically the first thing to be sacrificed by post-high school students. Several studies have noted that at a minimum, college-aged and up students require seven hours of sleep per night. Once you have enough sleep, you need to learn how to learn. Eliasson et al., 2010 significantly correlated that sleeping the same amount of time, at the same time, at an earlier time related to an increase in academic performance. Furthermore, taking naps throughout the day was also related to increasing academic performance.
The catch is twofold: (1) Study habits take a long time to form, and (2) you need to be consistent. Being able to cover the breadth of knowledge required in academia seems almost unfathomable. Augustin, 2014, clearly denotes that the disconnect occurring between medical students and the ability to learn. He notes that the being taught how to learn should be founded on research and built into curriculums.
So where do we start? The answer is in getting some shut-eye. Physiologically, REM sleep allows hippocampal-associated memories to consolidate, by reactivation of recent memories encoded during the day (Rasch & Born, 2013).
Now what; you have gone to bed early and woken up early. Now, it is about prioritization and organization. West & Sadoski, 2011 noted that one of two study skills that predicted academic performance in medical school was being able to manage time effectively.
Being a good student is not easy. It takes a really long time to develop good habits, so do not get discouraged when things do not go exactly as planned; it is part of the process. What is the take-home message: (1) Get to sleep, (2) Get up early, and (3) Get organized. These have been physiologically associated with effectively managing the demands of academia and memory-retention.
Maybe putting your book under your pillow and hoping to learn more is not completely erroneous.
References
Augustin, M. (2014). How to learn effectively in medical school: test yourself, learn actively, and repeat in intervals. The Yale Journal Of Biology And Medicine, 87(2), 207-212.
Eliasson, A. H., Lettieri, C. J., & Eliasson, A. H. (2010). Early to bed, early to rise! Sleep habits and academic performance in college students. Sleep & Breathing = Schlaf & Atmung, 14(1), 71-75. doi:10.1007/s11325-009-0282-2
Rasch, B., & Born, J. (2013). About sleep's role in memory. Physiological Reviews, 93(2), 681-766. doi:10.1152/physrev.00032.2012
West, C., & Sadoski, M. (2011). Do study strategies predict academic performance in medical school?. Medical Education, 45(7), 696-703. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.03929.x
Hello Mr. Powers,
ReplyDeleteThese are great recommendations for students in general, but sometimes things come up and students are forced to sacrifice sleep in order to study. What would you recommend for a student who is forced to pull an nighter? You stated in your article that sleep allows hippocampal-associated memories to consolidate. At what point does sleep deprivation start to deteriorate memory and how can students combat that? Asking for a friend. I also found an article supporting what you were saying with a twist. It found a significant negative correlation between average number of days per week that students obtained less than five hours of sleep and GPA. I think it would be interesting for further research to be done on long term sleep deprivation vs short term sleep deprivation on academic performance.
Lowry, M., Dean, K., & Manders, K. (2010). The link between sleep quantity and academic performance for the college student. Sentience, 3(2), 16-9.
I definitely agree with the importance of sleep and maintaining healthy sleeping habits to effectively consolidate recent/past memories and to improve cognition. However, there is more to learning then just by sleeping. You have stated “you need to learn how to learn” after having enough sleep, and I wanted to share an awesome book concerning how we learn/think. I’ve read an incredibly dense book called “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman (a must read book), and he discusses two systems of thinking, system 1 for fast and system 2 for slow, and how they interact with each other under certain circumstances. The automatic and unconscious act is completed by system 1 while the conscious control and effortful act is completed by system 2. As we are learning new materials such as the cardiovascular section in physiology, system 2 is being used, and much effort is required to acquire that new knowledge. Once we have effectively learned the new materials, it is converted to system 1 where we are able to recite it automatically and not a lot of effort is required. This is the simplified version of the two systems, but if you want to learn more in detail, I recommend reading the book for yourself.
ReplyDeleteConcerning sleep: Additional sleep such as napping can positively influence cognitive function as well. A recent study ( compared a group of college students who either were awake or took a nap, and the study concluded taking a midday nap (about an hour) did improve cognitive function based on the participants' performance, further supporting the importance of sleep (Ru et al., 2017).
Reference:
Ru, T., Chen, Q., You, J., & Zhou, G. (2017). Effects of a short midday nap on habitual nappers’ alertness, mood, and mental performance across cognitive domains. Journal of Sleep Res. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12638