Sleep is vitally important for your overall health and plays an important role in learning. HelpGuide.org writes that just as exercise and nutrition are vital for optimal health and happiness, so is sleep. The quality of your sleep has a direct effect on "the quality of your waking life, including your mental sharpness, productivity, emotional balance, creativity, physical vitality, and even your weight." In a news release on Feb. 25, 2013, the University of Tübingen has reported, Tübingen Study: Sleep Reinforces Learning.
When we are sleeping our brains store what we have learned during the day, in a process which has been found to be even more effective in children than in adults. It is vitally important for children to get an adequate amount of sleep. According to a study by Dr. Ines Wilhelm of the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, while they are sleeping, children’s brains transform subconsciously learned material into active knowledge, in an even more effective manner than adult brains do. Sleeping after learning supports the long-term storage of the material which is learned.
While we are sleeping memory is turned into a form that makes future learning easier. Children need to sleep longer and deeper, and they must learn enormous amounts of information every day. Wilhelm has said, “In children, much more efficient explicit knowledge is generated during sleep from a previously learned implicit task." Furthermore, the children’s extraordinary ability is associated with the large amount of deep sleep they get at night. Wilhelm has also said, "The formation of explicit knowledge appears to be a very specific ability of childhood sleep, since children typically benefit as much or less than adults from sleep when it comes to other types of memory tasks.”
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