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.

Medo de dentista em cena: uma análise de produções cinematográficas

The fear related to dental procedures can be acquired through disturbing experiences and/or negative cultural influences related in experiences of previous generations. Such influences may be present in diverse forms of cultural expression: in the cinema, plastic arts, music, literature, and diverse vehicles of printed and visual media. This research aimed investigates the images of fear related to the dental service and dentist in motion pictures. The study has qualitative approach, which used the documentary analysis of movies. The data collection was accomplished through research in the Internet by means of the Google tool (http://www.google.com.br), using the describing words filme and dentista . A total of 44 films were found. Of these, after selective criterion for films with scenes showing interaction between dentist and patient in the execution of clinical procedure, only 24 films were enclosed. Then, these were registered in data base created for this research. After second selective criterion of inclusion (scenes with suggestion of dental anxiety), 15 films remained. As regards cinematographic gender, the films with scenes showing "dental anxiety" varied between comedy (8), horror (3), drama (2), thriller (1) and childish (1). Of these films, scenes with images of situations that suggest fear of the dentist and his job were selected and described. The images were categorized by the identification of negative characteristics that incite "dental anxiety". Then, the classification of the categories was proceeded detaching the most recurrent characteristics in the scenes: situation of fear in the waiting-room; pain; instrument coarse/rudimentary; coarseness of the dentist; torture; and low qualification technique. The waiting-room was observed as a place of great tension, due to the noises coming from the dental attendance. The pain related to the Dentistry was the predominant subject in the majority of films (14), associated to others negative characteristics. The rudimentary aspects of procedures and instruments, and the coarse attitudes of the professional could be observed too. The dentist was characterized as confused, sadist, violent, insensitive, incompetent person and disturbed. Such results suggest that, despite the technological advances of the profession, the image of the dentist and his job is still transmitted in a negative way aspect and reinforces the dental anxiety