It is well known that sleep (both mid-day naps and nighttime sleep) has a large effect on the efficacy of motor skill acquisition. Performance on a newly learned task improves, often markedly, following a period of sleep.
A few citations (you can find many more by searching “motor skill acquisition sleep” or similar in google scholar) :
I want to know if the _timing_ of practice, relative to sleep, makes a difference for skill acquisition.
For instance, if you practice a skill at 7:00 PM, shortly before a night of sleep, will your performance be better in the morning than if you had practiced at 7:00 AM had a full day of wakefulness, and _then_ gone to sleep? If so, what is the effect size?
Josh Kaufman makes a claim to this effect in his book, The First 20 Hours. I have no particular reason to doubt him, 40 minutes of searching on google scholar did not turn up any papers about the importance of sleep and practice timing.
[Question] Does the _timing_ of practice, relative to sleep, make a difference for skill consolidation?
It is well known that sleep (both mid-day naps and nighttime sleep) has a large effect on the efficacy of motor skill acquisition. Performance on a newly learned task improves, often markedly, following a period of sleep.
A few citations (you can find many more by searching “motor skill acquisition sleep” or similar in google scholar) :
https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1959
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000341
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1111/j.1479-8425.2012.00576.x
I want to know if the _timing_ of practice, relative to sleep, makes a difference for skill acquisition.
For instance, if you practice a skill at 7:00 PM, shortly before a night of sleep, will your performance be better in the morning than if you had practiced at 7:00 AM had a full day of wakefulness, and _then_ gone to sleep? If so, what is the effect size?
Josh Kaufman makes a claim to this effect in his book, The First 20 Hours. I have no particular reason to doubt him, 40 minutes of searching on google scholar did not turn up any papers about the importance of sleep and practice timing.
Can you point me at a relevant citation?