Students: Cramming for your Tests gets you Nowhere.

Have you ever heard the phrase “practice makes perfect”?  Or at least perhaps “practice makes better”?  It turns out that there in fact is some truth in this statement, but skill perfection is not achieved overnight (pun intended).  Don’t see the pun?  Allow me to explain.  Memory consolidation for tasks that one has practiced, and for which he/she continues to strive toward improvement, require sleep to “solidify,” i.e. “to stick,” so that the brain holds the information in a more accessible place the next time.  Studies have shown that spaced out practice over time has a more positive impact on the learned task than does massed practice...the latter of which being a notion all-too-familiar for college students (procrastination).  Why do we procrastinate?  We are positively reinforced just enough to continue using this study method because it is easier on our schedules’ time constraints.

The article Stephanie Mazza considers learning and relearning as they relate to the sleep-wake cycle, memory consolidation, and practice.  To study these phenomena, healthy participants, ages 18-29 years old, were asked to learn the French translation of 16 Swahili words using only repeated retrieval-restudy practice.  Then, 12 hours later, participants relearned the material as experimenters measured how much practice was needed to do relearn.  The experiment parameters were controlled by the presence of a wake group (between practice sessions), a sleep group (between practice sessions), and a control group.  Retention was tested one week later, then six months later.

During learning, sleep and wake groups did not significantly differ in their number of successful translations.  A plausible explanation of the similarities noted here is the impact of similar sleepiness scores between the wake and sleep groups at the time of learning.  However, after 12 hours, the number of recalled translations was higher for participants in the sleep group than the wake group.  This result is consistent with previous findings that show the benefits of “postlearning” sleep on memory consolidation.  To be precise, participants who slept between learning sessions needed about half as many list trials for relearning as did “sleep-deprived” participants.  Long term retention is noted as well.  General research has shown sleep to both passively protect memory files against decay (simple forgetting) and interference (interruption of memories by the entrance of another memory from either the past or present) and to actively consolidate new memory files.  Memory consolidation during sleep also improves both the retrieval strength and storage strength of involved memories.

Sleep obviously is beneficial to the memory consolidation and retention process, so what are we to do with this information?  Determine immediate and effective ways to get more sleep into our daily schedules.  Starting from square one, we must realize that in the setting of studying for example, massed practice (cramming) does not allow time for proper sleep which promotes memory consolidation…and therefore good test grades, project results, etc.

Some basic things I would suggest, be it to myself, other college students, college-aspiring high school students, or adults, include:

·        creating a rigorous hour-by-hour schedule for each day of the week and sticking to it (suggested time intervals at 30 minutes or an hour).

·        for college students, setting up the schedule such that students are breaking up their study chunks by subjects so as not to burn out on one subject too quickly when great mental focus is needed for the next study increment focused on a different class.

·        Set reasonable goals and reward yourself for reaching those goals by doing an activity afterward that you enjoy and that is healthy.  These activities could include exercise, a meal, socializing, or even watching television – as long as you keep this “break time” within check!

·        When setting these goals, be efficient in accomplishing whatever task it is at hand…spread out its parts and do each part well so that you do not have to return to it.

You will find that employing habits like those listed above, you have much more time in your evenings to rest and go to bed so that your brain can properly consolidate the material you need to learn!

I definitely have observed this in my own sleep health.  Honestly, on days when I have a quiz or informal assessment of some kind, I have found that I perform better when a) I study days ahead instead of the night before or the day of and b) when I sleep “long and well” the night before.  This result is seen across tasks in the workplace, academics, medical evaluation performance, athletic performance, and a myriad of other places.  It’s time we act on the given knowledge and live more efficient and fruitful daily lives.