The breaks make smart

Learn just playing the piano, or study a new dance steps? Then make sure that you always take a break between training sessions. A new psychological study of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, shows namely that learning success is achieved faster if to Schedule regular breaks and not trained around the clock.

Scientists Soren Ashley and Joel Pearson seem old saying "practice makes perfect" so to belie. Because people who practice too much, which will make minor progress all the way to the law of diminishing returns. These findings have now been published in the scientific journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society B".

The study will learn new skills rewiring in the brain instead. This phenomenon is called neural plasticity. In order to acquire new skills are long term, the changes in the brain need to be deepened and consolidated, which is accomplished by the transfer from short-term to long-term memory. "If the information and / or neural changes not consolidated according to a study progress only makes short noticeable or arises not even a" explain the researchers.

Other studies suggest that this may adversely affect sleep deprivation on the consolidation process. The same is true if you want to learn a second skill before you have the first truly internalized.

"Many studies have shown that a learning progress basically fails if you do not sleep for a training day. The situation is similar, if you practice too much and the brain does not have enough time to consolidate there, "said Dr. Pearson.

The researchers studied mainly as regular breaks during practice affect the learning progress. For this purpose they set 31 subjects a difficult computer task that involved the detection of spots of light on a screen with numerous visual distractions. For this purpose, the subjects were divided into three groups, which should cope with the task in three different ways.

The first group dealt for one hour on the first day with the task, while the second two hours without a break. Although the third group exercised two hours, however, made between the practice sessions an hour of rest, in which the group members were allowed to do everything that was your fancy - except sleep.

On the second day turned out that the first group had mastered the task better than the second, although the first group had half the time busy. The group with the regular breaks also had a better learning progress than the second, even though the two groups had ultimately spent as much time with the release of the object.

Source: Sidney [Institut Ranke-Heinemann]