Naturalistic in-school sleep intervention pattern: weekly randomized cross-over naps after regular teacher-led lessons

Design · All designs
Evidence · 3 claims (2 for, 1 mixed) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description

This pattern embeds a nap intervention in ordinary schooling: curricular content is taught by the regular class teacher, students are "randomly sorted into sleep and non-sleep sets of equal size" each week, and each student experiences all conditions. Retention is measured days later with teacher-normed multiple-choice tests. The design bypasses experimenter-novelty confounds and between-group differences that limited prior school nap studies.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• A scheduled slot after a morning class, a quiet dark room with mats and eye masks, and curricular content divided into equivalent parts verified on an independent sample

Constraints

• The authors did not monitor rest/activity (actigraphy or EEG) and did not assess sleep inertia at awakening because the school schedule ended at 12:00

Target Learners

• fifth-grade students in a public school

Learning Goals

• retention of declarative curricular content in Science and History

Claims

• Long Post Class Naps Improve Retention Vs Break [+M]
• Long Naps Vs Specific Interference Retention [+M]
• Short Naps No Retention Benefit [~M]

Related Designs

Examples

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Key Sources

• Thiago Cabral, Natália B. Mota, Lucia Fraga, Mauro Copelli, Mark A. McDaniel and Sidarta Ribeiro. (2018). Post-class naps boost declarative learning in a naturalistic school setting. npj Science of Learning. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-018-0031-z

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	design
id	post-class-nap-cross-over-school-pattern
title	Naturalistic in-school sleep intervention pattern: weekly randomized cross-over naps after regular teacher-led lessons
description	This pattern embeds a nap intervention in ordinary schooling: curricular content is taught by the regular class teacher, students are "randomly sorted into sleep and non-sleep sets of equal size" each week, and each s...
status	review
generated	by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-26
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — thiago-cabral-2018

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