Can resting awake after hearing unfamiliar made-up words help you recognize them a week later?

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The researchers asked whether rest helps memories last even when people cannot intentionally run through what they just learned. In an initial experiment using concrete nouns, they confirmed that a rest-related memory advantage could be detected with a recognition test, rather than a test requiring people to recall words without prompts.

In the next experiment, participants heard 30 made-up words introduced as foreign names at a bridge club abroad. They then either rested awake or played a visual spot-the-difference game for 10 minutes. Tests assessed whether they recognized the words 15 minutes and 7 days after hearing them. Recognition was better after rest, and the advantage persisted for at least 7 days.

The findings support the idea that deliberate rehearsal is not necessary for this benefit. The authors interpret the results as evidence that rest allows newly learned information to become more firmly established in memory. That process is their explanation of the findings, rather than something directly measured in the experiments. The abstract does not report participants’ ages, sample sizes or the size of the benefit, and this particular task does not establish how much rest would help with everyday studying.