Abstract
Sleep more than doubles the probability of gaining explicit insight into a hidden rule — by restructuring new memory representations rather than merely consolidating them (Wagner et al., 2004).
Wagner, U., Gais, S., Haider, H., Verleger, R., & Born, J. (2004). Sleep inspires insight. Nature, 427(6972), 352–355. DOI
Key findings
- Insight vs incremental — Subjects improve gradually (speed) or abruptly (hidden rule discovery) on a number-reduction task.
- Sleep facilitation: — >2× subjects gained insight after 8h sleep vs wakefulness — regardless of time of day.
Application
When after training on a covert arithmetic rule, students who sleep before retest are more than twice as likely to spontaneously discover the hidden rule than those who stay awake — open this cite for the study behind the move.