Scientists have demonstrated how the brain consolidates memories while you sleep in research on animals.
Students must get more sleep if they want better GPA. The transition from college to university is unlike any other. For many teenagers and young adults, getting a decent night’s sleep can be difficult due to late-night exam preparation, varied study habits, as well as their newfound freedom.
According to a recent study by a team from Carnegie Mellon University, it might even jeopardise the academic achievement of some kids. According to their research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a student’s GPA can suffer if they sleep for less than six hours each night.
“Animal studies have shown how critical sleep is for learning and memory,” said David Creswell, study team leader and the William S. Dietrich II Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, in a university release.
“Here we show how this work translates to humans. The less nightly sleep a first-year college student gets at the beginning of the school term predicts a lower GPA at the end of the term, some five to nine weeks later. Lack of sleep may be hurting students’ ability to learn in their college classrooms.”
More From FactFile: COMSATS lecturer suspended for quizzing students about incest
Sleep quantity and quality are significant predictors of many health and performance outcomes, according to earlier research. Teenagers are advised to acquire eight to 10 hours of sleep per night according to the most recent sleep recommendations.
Scientists have demonstrated how the brain consolidates memories while you sleep in research on animals. Information learnt during the day may be lost when normal sleep is disturbed.
Creswell and the team intended to investigate whether insufficient sleep could affect learning and how this might manifest in academic accomplishment because this would be crucial for kids.
Losing an hour of sleep could ruin your grades
Almost 600 first-year students from five studies conducted at three different universities were examined for this purpose. Fitbit devices were worn by the pupils to track their sleeping habits. Students slept about 6.5 hours per night on average, according to the researchers.
They even discovered that pupils who get less than six hours of sleep significantly perform worse in class. Also, at the conclusion of the term, the GPA decreases by 0.07 for every hour of sleep lost.
“Once you start dipping below six hours, you are starting to accumulate a massive sleep debt that can impair a student’s health and study habits, compromising the whole system,” Creswell explained. “Most surprising to me was that no matter what we did to make the effect go away, it persisted.”
The research team reports that after controlling for past academic performance, daytime napping, race, gender, and first-generation status, the results remained the same.
“A popular belief among college students is value studying more or partying more over nightly sleep,” Creswell concluded. “Our work here suggests that there are potentially real costs to reducing your nightly sleep on your ability to learn and achieve in college. There’s real value in budgeting for the importance of nightly sleep.”
This research backs up the idea that schools should think about putting structured programmes and interventions in place to motivate students to prioritise obtaining more rest.
