If you do one thing this week . . . take a wakeful rest after learning

COULD TAKING a wakeful rest after learning help memory? Experiments where people were asked to remember prose suggest that it could.

In the recent study, published in Psychological Science, adult participants were told short stories. That was followed by 10 minutes where some rested awake but undistracted, while others played a non-verbal spot-the-difference game.

Those who had the wakeful rest remembered more of the story’s information a week later.

“Our findings support the view that the formation of new memories is not completed within seconds,” says researcher Dr Michaela Dewar from the University of Edinburgh in a release.

“Indeed, our work demonstrates that activities that we are engaged in for the first few minutes after learning new information really affect how well we remember this information after a week.”