sleep and problem solving Flashcards
What did Ebbinghaus (1885) find about sleep and memory consolidation?
Ebbinghaus’s studies on forgetting curves showed that sleep after encoding of nonsense syllables supports memory consolidation, preventing forgetting.
What did Diekelmann and Born (2010) discover about sleep and memory?
They proposed that active neuronal replay of memory representations occurs during slow-wave sleep (SWS), which is essential for memory consolidation
What did Van Der Werf et al. (2009) find regarding sleep and learning?
They found that sleep restores learning capabilities, enhancing the ability to learn and consolidate new information
What did Sio, Monaghan, and Ormerod (2013) investigate in their study on sleep and problem solving?
They studied how sleep affects problem solving, specifically in tasks involving Remote Associates Tasks (RATs)—a test of creative problem solving.
What is an example of a Remote Associates Task (RAT) used to measure problem-solving ability?
Example 1:
What word goes with: Cottage, Swiss, Cake?
Answer: Cheese
Example 2:
What word goes with: Board, Mail, Magic?
Answer: black
What did Sio et al. (2013) find about sleep and problem solving?
Sio, Monaghan, & Ormerod (2013) found that sleep can enhance problem-solving performance, especially for difficult verbal problems like those in the RAT. Their study showed that participants who slept after being given a problem performed better at solving the problem than those who stayed awake.
What are two alternative explanations for how sleep affects problem-solving?
Spreading Activation: Sleep may allow for the spread of activation across sparse word networks, helping to make connections between related but previously unlinked concepts.
Forgetting: Sleep may help “clear out” erroneous or less relevant associations that were made during problem-solving. This could be particularly important for harder problems, where incorrect connections are more likely to be formed.
What happens during sleep in relation to memory consolidation?
During sleep, the brain consolidates information that was previously encoded. This process involves strengthening and linking related information together, which helps improve long-term memory retention.
What did Sio et al. (2013) find about the effects of sleep on harder vs. easier word sets in the RAT?
Sio et al. found no significant difference in the number of associations generated for harder and easier word sets. This suggests that sleep may help participants in both cases, but its primary effect might be to facilitate deeper, more meaningful connections rather than simply increasing the number of connections.
What was the focus of Monaghan et al.’s (2015) study regarding sleep and problem-solving?
Monaghan et al. (2015) focused on how sleep promotes analogical transfer, which is the ability to apply knowledge or solutions from one domain to a new but related domain. They found that sleep enhances the ability to recognize patterns and transfer insights from one problem to another.
What did the results of Monaghan et al.’s (2015) study on sleep and analogical transfer show?
Their research showed that participants who had sleep between learning a problem and solving it were better at applying insights from one problem to another. This suggests that sleep not only aids in memory consolidation but also improves higher-level cognitive processes like analogical reasoning.
Do naps always benefit problem-solving, according to research?
No, naps do not always benefit problem-solving. Hołda et al. (2020) found that for ill-defined problems, which lack clear solutions or structure, naps did not lead to improvements in problem-solving performance. This suggests that sleep may be more beneficial for problems with a clear structure or well-defined solutions.
What did Lewis et al. (2018) suggest about memory replay during sleep and creative problem-solving?
Lewis et al. (2018) suggested that memory replay during sleep helps to boost creative problem-solving, particularly for well-defined problems. Sleep facilitates the reorganization and integration of knowledge, allowing individuals to approach problems from new perspectives, enhancing creativity and innovation.
