Problem-solving is part of everyone’s daily life. If you’re facing a tough problem at work, you truly are better off getting a good night’s sleep before making any decisions, as findings from a study at Northwestern University suggest.
Because many tricky problems are solved by thinking of them in a fresh way, Sanders and cognitive researchers Samuel Osburn, Ken A. Paller, and Mark Beeman assumed that processing unsolved problems during sleep would help people purify their memories of the problems, and improve their chances of solving them the next day.
To test that assumption, they used a technique known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR) with 61 study participants. In two evening laboratory sessions, the participants attempted to solve verbal, space, and other puzzles one at a time with the experimenters randomly pairing each puzzle with a musical sound. If the participants failed to solve a puzzle within 2 minutes, the corresponding sound played one more time. After failing to solve six puzzles each evening, they replayed the puzzle-sound pairings until they had them down.
After those sessions, participants took home technology that provided the sound cues while they slept.
Across the two mornings, they solved more cued puzzles than uncued puzzles. In fact, they solved 55 percent more puzzles when the corresponding sound had been played while they slept.
“While we use tricky puzzles in our study, the underlying cognitive processes could relate to solving any problem on which someone is stuck or blocked by an incorrect approach,” Sanders explains. “They advised, however, that the effect may only apply to situations in which an individual already has some background information to help solve a problem.” Beeman says.
Still, the study reveals important information about sleep, memory, and incubation (潜伏期) for problem-solving. The team plans to further study these processes, to further pin down the mechanisms and to see how it occurs in real-life problem-solving.
4. What is the assumption mainly about?
A.Sleep’s effect on problem-solving. | B.Solving problems during sleep. |
C.Memory’s impact on problem-solving. | D.Improper ways of solving problems. |
5. What can we learn about the experiments?
A.they set six puzzles for each participant. | B.they had the puzzles solved in the evenings. |
C.they applied matching sounds to puzzle-solving. | D.they met with disapproval. |
6. What’s the writer’s attitude towards the study?
A.Subjective. | B.Objective. | C.Indifferent | D.Pessimistic |