A new study has found that sometimes kids can remember a piece of information better a few days later, instead of the day they first learnt it.
The study led by Ohio State University asked four and five-year-old kids to remember associations between objects while playing a video game and when the game was re-played after two-days, kids scored more than 20% higher than the kids who re-played it later on the same day.
Kevin Darby, co-author of the study, said that kids can make complex associations it’s just they need more time to do it.
The study highlighted two different but related cognitive phenomena simultaneously: “extreme forgetting” when kids learn two similar things in rapid succession, and the second thing causes them to forget the first–and “delayed remembering” when they can recall the previously forgotten information days later.
Vladimir Sloutsky, the lead author of the study, said that children can almost completely forget what they just learned, but then their memories can actually improve with time.
Sloutsky added that although kids struggle to form complex associations in the moment, but with some time off and periods of sleep they were able to do better.
The researchers concluded that the study does not in any way suggest that kids can absorb adult-sized quantities of information if only they are given time to sleep on it.
The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.