Health & Medicine
Sleeping Over a Problem Helps in Resolving It
Brooke Miller
First Posted: Oct 13, 2012 10:14 AM EDT
Thrashed with numerous problems in life? Then you might be curious to know whether sleeping over them or time spent thinking works best?
According to a study from Lancaster University has found that sleeping on a problem really can help people to find a solution.
The study involved 27 men and 34 women. These participants were asked to attempt easy and difficult verabal insight problem and following a period of sleep, time spent wake or no delay at all. The three groups of participants reattempted previously unsolved problems.
On doing so the researchers noticed that the sleep group solved a greater number of difficult problems than did the other groups. But when it came to easy problems no difference was noticed.
After analyzing the result, it was concluded by the authors of the study Ut Na Sio, Padraic Monaghan and Tom Ormerod all from the Centre for Research in Human Development and Learning at Lancaster's Department of Psychology, that sleep facilitates problem solving but this has its primary effect for harder problems.
The author of the study Ut Na Sio, Padraic Monaghan and Tom Ormerod all from the Centre for Research in Human Development and Learning at Lancaster's Department of Psychology concluded that Professor Padraic Monaghan said: "We've known for years that sleep has a profound effect on our ability to be creative and find new solutions to problems. Our study shows that this sleep effect is greatest when the problems facing us are difficult. Sleep appears to help us solve problems by accessing information that is remote to the initial problem, that may not be initially brought to mind. Sleep has been proposed to 'spread activation' to the solution that is initially distant from our first attempts at the problem. The advice stemming from this and related research is to leave a problem aside if you're stuck, and get some sleep if it's a really difficult problem."
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First Posted: Oct 13, 2012 10:14 AM EDT
Thrashed with numerous problems in life? Then you might be curious to know whether sleeping over them or time spent thinking works best?
According to a study from Lancaster University has found that sleeping on a problem really can help people to find a solution.
The study involved 27 men and 34 women. These participants were asked to attempt easy and difficult verabal insight problem and following a period of sleep, time spent wake or no delay at all. The three groups of participants reattempted previously unsolved problems.
On doing so the researchers noticed that the sleep group solved a greater number of difficult problems than did the other groups. But when it came to easy problems no difference was noticed.
After analyzing the result, it was concluded by the authors of the study Ut Na Sio, Padraic Monaghan and Tom Ormerod all from the Centre for Research in Human Development and Learning at Lancaster's Department of Psychology, that sleep facilitates problem solving but this has its primary effect for harder problems.
The author of the study Ut Na Sio, Padraic Monaghan and Tom Ormerod all from the Centre for Research in Human Development and Learning at Lancaster's Department of Psychology concluded that Professor Padraic Monaghan said: "We've known for years that sleep has a profound effect on our ability to be creative and find new solutions to problems. Our study shows that this sleep effect is greatest when the problems facing us are difficult. Sleep appears to help us solve problems by accessing information that is remote to the initial problem, that may not be initially brought to mind. Sleep has been proposed to 'spread activation' to the solution that is initially distant from our first attempts at the problem. The advice stemming from this and related research is to leave a problem aside if you're stuck, and get some sleep if it's a really difficult problem."
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone