Department of Psychology, University of Campania "L. Vanvitelli", Caserta, Italy.
Department Neurofarba, University of Firenze, Firenze, Italy.
J Sleep Res. 2020 Dec;29(6):e13034. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13034. Epub 2020 Apr 7.
Recent studies show that sleep facilitates the learning of complex cognitive skills. Here, we assess the effect of sleep on performance in an ecological, multi-componential task, which requires subjects to trace on a screen as many words as possible with 16 letters, some of which ("bonuses") multiply the value of letters or words containing them. In a within-subjects design, 23 healthy adults underwent training and retest, with a retention period (approximately 8 hr) spent awake (WK, with training in the morning and retest in the afternoon) or asleep (SL, with training in the evening and retest in the morning). The main performance measure (GLOB) results from the total value of the letters used, the number of words, their length and the strategic use of bonus letters. An additional measure (WORDS, i.e., the proportion of words correctly detected over all detectable words) was also used, mainly reflecting procedural rather than strategic skills. In WK, although GLOB increased at retest, a significant improvement emerged only for WORDS, whereas in SL only GLOB was enhanced. In WK, the GLOB improvement appears to depend on the increase in the number of words detected (GLOB and WORDS improvement measures were positively associated), whereas in SL this association was not observed, indicating a shift to more complex but more rewarding strategies. Our data contribute to the understanding of everyday life learning processes by suggesting that sleep benefits memories of future relevance and promotes preferential consolidation of strategic skills when this is useful to achieve one's goal.
最近的研究表明，睡眠有助于复杂认知技能的学习。在这里，我们评估了睡眠对一项生态、多成分任务表现的影响，该任务要求受试者在屏幕上尽可能多地追踪 16 个字母的单词，其中一些（“奖金”）会增加字母或包含它们的单词的价值。在一项被试内设计中，23 名健康成年人接受了训练和再测试，在大约 8 小时的保留期内保持清醒（WK，上午训练，下午再测试）或睡眠（SL，晚上训练，上午再测试）。主要的表现衡量标准（GLOB）结果来自所使用的字母的总价值、单词的数量、它们的长度以及奖金字母的策略性使用。还使用了另一个衡量标准（WORDS，即正确检测到的单词数与所有可检测到的单词之比），主要反映程序性而不是策略性技能。在 WK 中，尽管再测试时 GLOB 增加，但只有 WORDS 出现显著改善，而在 SL 中只有 GLOB 得到增强。在 WK 中，GLOB 的改善似乎取决于检测到的单词数量的增加（GLOB 和 WORDS 改善措施呈正相关），而在 SL 中则没有观察到这种关联，表明转向更复杂但更有回报的策略。我们的数据通过表明睡眠有益于未来相关记忆的形成，并促进在实现目标时优先巩固策略性技能，为理解日常生活中的学习过程做出了贡献。
