SynthesisPsychonomic bulletin & review2026
Should we all just take 10? A meta-analysis of wakeful rest.
Synthesis in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Wakeful rest and memory consolidation in an ecologically valid educational setting: no benefit over distractor tasks.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Distinct roles of brain network flexibility in motor learning across age.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.