Naps in school can enhance the duration of declarative memories learned by adolescents

Sleep helps the consolidation of declarative memories in the laboratory, but the pro-mnemonic effect of daytime naps in schools is yet to be fully characterized. While a few studies indicate that sleep can indeed benefit school learning, it remains unclear how best to use it. Here we set out to evaluate the influence of daytime naps on the duration of declarative memories learned in school by students of 10–15 years old. A total of 584 students from 6th grade were investigated. Students within a regular classroom were exposed to a 15-min lecture on new declarative contents, absent from the standard curriculum for this age group. The students were then randomly sorted into nap and non-nap groups. Students in the nap group were conducted to a quiet room with mats, received sleep masks and were invited to sleep. At the same time, students in the non-nap group attended regular school classes given by their usual teacher (Experiment I), or English classes given by another experimenter (Experiment II). These 2 versions of the study differed in a number of ways. In Experiment I (n = 371), students were pre-tested on lecture-related contents before the lecture, were invited to nap for up to 2 h, and after 1, 2, or 5 days received surprise tests with similar content but different wording and question order. In Experiment II (n = 213), students were invited to nap for up to 50 min (duration of a regular class); surprise tests were applied immediately after the lecture, and repeated after 5, 30, or 110 days. Experiment I showed a significant ∼10% gain in test scores for both nap and non-nap groups 1 day after learning, in comparison with pre-test scores. This gain was sustained in the nap group after 2 and 5 days, but in the non-nap group it decayed completely after 5 days. In Experiment II, the nap group showed significantly higher scores than the non-nap group at all times tested, thus precluding specific conclusions. The results suggest that sleep can be used to enhance the duration of memory contents learned in school.

Leitora-criadora: a experiência situada na construção dramatúrgica

This study has the purpose of investigating the term reader-creator , on the textual aspects of the dramatical works A Morte nos Olhos , A Memória Ferida and Na Outra Margem (2010) by Antonia Pereira Bezerra. In this sense, we propose an analysis of these works based on author‟s life experience as creative matter for a autofictional narrative, highlighting the relations between the autobiographical elements (LEJEUNE, 2008; DOSSE, 2009) and fictional elements in the construction of dramatic narratives. The theoretical analysis pervades the studies fields of Reception Aesthetics (ISER, 1996), memory (RICOUER, 2007) and narrative (RICOEUR, 2010), evidencing the relation between the author and the pursuit of her memories and life experiences, the matter to elaboration of writing. Then we intend thinking a reader-creator of herself, that at the same time she seeks in her memories the biographic aspects to her narrative, she converts this reality with the insertion of fictional elements from the imagination (SARTRE, 2008)