Never mind learning by doing, how about learning by dreaming?
According to a study carried out at Harvard Medical School, dreaming is the brain's way of learning and making sense of the world.
People who nap and dream about a task they have just learned perform it better when they wake up than those who don't sleep at all or don't report any associated dreams.
A group of 99 volunteers were asked to sit in front of a computer screen and learn the layout of a three-dimensional maze so that they could find their way to a landmark - a tree - when they were dropped at a random location within the virtual space five hours later. Those who were allowed to take a nap and also remembered dreaming of the task found the tree in less time.
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