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Effects of wakeful resting versus social media usage after learning on the retention of new memories
Author(s) -
Martini Markus,
Heinz Alexander,
Hinterholzer Johanna,
Martini Caroline,
Sachse Pierre
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3641
Subject(s) - psychology , recall , social media , incidental learning , social learning , free recall , human memory , cognition , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , neuroscience , pedagogy , computer science , world wide web
Summary Communication and information sharing via social media platforms is a common and popular activity. The majority of existing studies indicate that social media usage has detrimental effects on learning and memory. However, it is an open question as to whether social media usage affects memory even after learning. To test this, healthy young adults learned and immediately recalled a vocabulary list. Subsequent to recall, participants either wakefully rested for 8 min or used social media for 8 min. A delayed recall test took place after the wakeful resting condition and the social media condition and again after 1 day. Our results showed that social media usage, compared with wakeful resting, had detrimental effects on memory performance over both retention intervals. We assume that social media usage interfered with memory consolidation of learned vocabularies and suggest that learners opt for wakeful resting over social media usage as a learning‐break activity.