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sleep learning/1
INTRODUCTION
Is it possible for people to register and retain what is said in their presence
while they sleep? If it is possible, is the learning that takes place during
sleep efficient enough to be of practical as well as theoretical significance?
These are the questions of chief concern in this paper. To address these issues,
research dealing with a number of variables that may have an important influence
on sleep learning is summarized in the second section of the paper, while in the
third section, some tentative conclusions concerning the possibility and
practicality of learning during sleep are offered, and prospects for future
research are outlined. Much of the material covered in both of these sections
has been culled from a remarkably thorough and trenchant review of the sleep
learning literature by Aarons (1976), which I recommend to interested readers
in the strongest possible terms.
As will become apparent in the course of subsequent discussion, solid facts
about sleep learning are scarce, and only one of the variables to be considered
--the level of electroencephalographic (EEG) activation that accompanies or
follows the presentation of a to-be-learned or target item--has to date been
examined in an empirically exacting manner. Although the present dearth of
reliable data is unfortunate, it is also understandable. For many years
following publication of the carefully controlled EEG experiments by Emmons
and Simon (1956; Simon & Emmons 1956), sleep learning was a dead issue. They
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sleep learning/2
demonstrated that verbal information presented during sleep was irretrievable
upon awakening unless presentation coincided with alpha activity, an BEG
indicator of arousal or wakefulness. Their negative results, in combination
with a highly critical commentary (Simon & Emmons 1955) on the positive results
that had been obtained by others (e.g., Fox & Robbins 1952; Leupa & Bateman 1952),
caused most researchers in the United States and other Western nations to
abandon the idea that people may be able to learn while they sleep.
In more recent times, however, there has been a modest revival of interest
in the possibility of sleep learning, owing to three important developments.
First, a number of studies have shown that during slow wave (alpha free) sleep,
subjects are able to make complex discriminations between repetitive auditory
signals (e.g., Oswald et al. 1960), and to perform, when cued with appropriate
sensory stimuli, motor responses which they had learned while awake (e.g.,
Okuma et al. 1966). One implication of these and related results (see Koulack
& Goodenough 1976; Lehmann & Koukkou 1974) is that even during deep sleep,
short-term storage of new information is possible, as is access to old
information in long-term memory. Second, evidence from several sources (see
Firth 1973; Goodenough 1978) suggests that habituation or conditioning of
various physiological responses, such as heart rate and GSR, can occur during
sleep, albeit at a slower rate than occurs during wakefulness. Since both
habituation and conditioning represent forms of learning, this evidence implies
that the inability to remember information presented during sleep
may be attributable not to difficulties in storing the information, but rather,
to a failure to retrieve the information on waking (Koukkou & Lehmann 1983;
Koulack & Goodenough 1976). Third, there have been numerous reports out of
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sleep learning/3
the Soviet Union and other Eastern countries of success in demonstrating sleep
learning (see Hoskovec 1966; Rubin 1968, 1971). Though there can be no doubt
that learning is dramatically impaired during sleep (see Goodenough 1978;
Oltman et al. 1977), these reports recommend a reappraisal of the conclusion
that sleep learning is impossible, and raise a number of interesting questions
concerning the conditions under which learning may occur. It is to these
conditions that ~ now turn
Representative terms from entire chapter:
alpha free
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