Is it possible that people simply continue to think about what they were trying to learn, consciously or not, when given no tasks? Why is the control comparing people who tried to learn information and then took a break to people who tried to learn even more information? Would a more insightful control be to look at how people who took a break compared to people who continued studying the material during the break time?
I would expect those who continued to study for more time would have better recall, but that would be incredible if untrue, ie. you could literally learn more by doing less. Taken to the extreme you seem to learn more by doing less at times. For example you'll learn more sleeping 8 hours each night for a week than staying up for a week straight, but I wonder if these short breaks allow for fatigue recovery and memory consolidation, like sleep, or if they simply provide opportunity to think more about material, which would obviously give an advantage as compared to the people in the studies "controls" that have to learn new information.
Anecdotally, I definitely feel that meditation and breaks helps me consolidate my learnings and raise my overall productivity, but I'm not sure I find the particular scientific studies described here to be highly convincing of that.
I would expect those who continued to study for more time would have better recall, but that would be incredible if untrue, ie. you could literally learn more by doing less. Taken to the extreme you seem to learn more by doing less at times. For example you'll learn more sleeping 8 hours each night for a week than staying up for a week straight, but I wonder if these short breaks allow for fatigue recovery and memory consolidation, like sleep, or if they simply provide opportunity to think more about material, which would obviously give an advantage as compared to the people in the studies "controls" that have to learn new information.
Anecdotally, I definitely feel that meditation and breaks helps me consolidate my learnings and raise my overall productivity, but I'm not sure I find the particular scientific studies described here to be highly convincing of that.