Should we all just take 10? A meta-analysis of wakeful rest

According to previous research, if people rest quietly for a brief period of time after learning, they have better memory (i.e., reduced forgetting) after a delay compared to when they engage in a cognitively demanding task. We call this the wakeful rest effect. It has been observed with different kinds of study items, interference tasks, and delay intervals involving younger adults, older adults, and patients with amnesia. Despite the sometimes-presumed robustness of the effect, many studies have failed to observe significant results, particularly in healthy young adult populations. This random-effects meta-analysis combined 142 effect sizes from 51 studies to evaluate the evidence for the wakeful rest effect and to identify the sources of variation. Meta-regression was also done. As expected, there were larger effects for patient populations than for healthy populations, as well as weaker effects for younger than older adults. The results of this meta-analysis can inform further research on the potential benefits of wakeful rest.