The Huron University College Journal of Learning and

Motivation
Volume 48 | Issue 1 Article 10

2010

The Influence of Sleep on Memory

Andrew Soave

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Soave, Andrew (2010) "The Influence of Sleep on Memory," The Huron University College Journal of Learning and Motivation: Vol. 48 :
Iss. 1 , Article 10.
Available at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/hucjlm/vol48/iss1/10

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Sleep and Memory 263

The Influence of Sleep on Memory

Andrew Soave

Huron College

The purpose of the current report was to determine if sleep

could affect the recall of word pairs, •f'articipants were 24
students from the University of Western Ontario and its
affiliate campuses. Participants were given 8 concrete or
abstract word pairs and were tested on the word pairs 12
hours later. Participants filled this time with either sleep or
by being awake. The results of the study showed that there
was no significant interaction between sleep or awake
conditions with concreteness on recall F(l,20) = 1.76, p
>.05, n.s. This study concludes that sleep did not effect the
recall of word pairs, which differs from the results of past
research.

The influence that sleep has on memory is still unclear in many research studies.

Gais, Molle, Helms and Bom (2002) performed a study were they monitored the different

EEG activity in the brain while participants were asleep. In specific, they were looking at

the formation of sleep spindles during sleep. The participants in the study stayed in a

sleep laboratory for three nights and during these three nights the participants were

attached to the EEG (Gais et al, 2002). Before falling asleep on one of the two nights the

participants learned a set of word lists and were tested on this set after the leaming task

was finished and 30 minutes after they awoke the next morning (Gais et al, 2002).

Participants also took part in a non-leaming task on the other night, and this was done to

compared the difference EEG results between a leaming and non-leaming task. The

results of the study showed that when participants slept after the learning task, they had a

higher density of sleep spindles than those in the non-learning task (Gais et al, 2002).

This indicates that something occurs during sleep, and these sleep spindles could
Sleep and Memory 264

represent memory consolidation (Gais et al, 2002). However, since it is a correlation

study it cannot prove anything, but it does highlight that there is some biological aspect to

the relationship between sleep and memory.

Other researchers have tried to measure the influence of sleep has on memory by

using recall instead of sleep spindles. Stickgold, Whidbee, Schirmer, Patel and Hobson

(2000), compared awake participants' recall to those that were asleep on a visual

recognition task. The results of the study showed that participants that received more than

6 hours of sleep outperformed participants in the awake group (Stickgold et al, 2000).

They also found that if the participant did not get more then 6 hours of sleep, they would

not improve on the task. Stickgold et al. (2000) found that the longer the participant slept,

the better they performed on the recognition task. Payne, Schacter, Propper, Huang,

Wamsley, Tucker, Walker and Stickgold (2009) performed a study where they compared

the recall of participants who were in a sleep group, to participants that were in an awake

group. Participants recalled words which they heard from a tape recording, and they

learned the words at either 9am or 9pm and were tested on them 12 hours later. The

results of the study showed that participants in the sleep condition recalled more words

than participants in the awake condition (Payne et al, 2009). However, there was another

interesting result; the study showed that participants in the sleep condition also recalled

more false words than those in the awake condition. Both of these studies support that

sleep participants perform better than awake participants on recall.

Some researchers have looked at how to enhance specific tasks by using particular

periods of sleep. Plihal and Born (1997) performed a study comparing memory in

participants that had more short wave sleep (SWS) or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Sleep and Memory -^"0

The participants had to complete two different tasks. The first task was a paired associate

task, and the second task was a mirror tracing task. Participants were in one of four

groups, early sleep which tested SWS, early awake, late sleep which tested REM sleep

and late awake. The results of the study showed that participants who received more

SWS did better on the paired associate task, conversely participants in the REM sleep

group performed better on the mirror tracing task (Plihal & Born, 1997). Both of these

groups of participants performed significantly better then the awake participants. Wagner,

Gais, and Born (2001) also compared recall of participants who were in two different

sleep groups a REM and SWS group, to an awake group of participants. The participants

had to memorize a set of text, that was either emotional or neutral. The results of the

study showed that both the REM sleep group and the SWS group outperformed the

awake participants (Wagner et al, 2001). However, the REM group performed better

when compared to the SWS group. Recall may be influenced by the individual task.

Researchers have also studied participants' recall while they have been awake,

without any sleep condition. Paivio (1965) performed a study in which he measured what

set of words participants could remember better, concrete or abstract words. The study

had participants tested on four different sets of word pairs that were either all concrete

words, all abstract words, or concrete and abstract words. Paivio (1965) found that the

abstract words were the hardest to remember, while the concrete words were the easiest

to remember. He attributed this to the amount of imagery that each word had associated

with it. Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968), tested this hypothesis further by measuring

concreteness, imagery, and meaningfulness in 925 words. The participants in the study

rated the different words on the three different measures across two different days. Paivio
Sleep and Memory 266

et al, (1968) found that words that were high on imagery were also high on concreteness

and this seemed to define a common dimension. The Paivio (1965) study shows that

words that are high in concreteness are easier to recall than words low in concreteness, or

abstract words.

Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) performed a study in which they compared the

recall of participants who were awake or slept for 1, 2, 4, or 8 hours. Participants had to

memorize non-sense syllables and then they were tested on their ability to recall as many

syllables as they could remember. The participants filled the time between testing and

leaming by either sleeping or going about their normal day. The results of the study

showed that participants in the sleep condition recalled more words than those in the

awake condition (Jenkins and Dallenbach, 1924). The biggest difference of recall

occurred in the 8 hour condition, where the participants in the sleep condition greatly out

performed participants in the awake condition. This study supports that the longer a

participant sleeps, the better their recall will be.

The current study is testing whether sleep will have an influence on memory.

Previous research has supported that sleep can influence recall (Jenkins and Dallenbach,

1924; Plihal & Bom, 1997; Payne et al, 2009). The current study will used the design

from the Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) study, but instead of using non-sense syllables

the word pairs from the Paivio (1965) study will be used. The current study should show

that participants in the sleep condition will recall more word pairs than those in the awake

condition, with both the concrete and abstract word pairs. Concrete word pairs should

also be easier to recall than abstract word pairs.

Sleep and Memory 267

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited from the University of Western Ontario and its

affiliated campuses. The age range of the participants' age was between 18 and 24, there

were 24 participants in total, 9 were male, and 15 were female. Participants were most

likely from the middle to upper socio economic class. The participants were all in

different years of university.

Materials

The study used two different word lists that either consisted of 8 concrete word

pairs or 8 abstract word pairs. Please refer to appendix B, for the word lists used for both

the concrete and abstract word pairs. These word lists were taken from the Paivio (1965)

study, in which he used the word pairs to test recall. The lists were divided into concrete

or abstract based on the amount of imagery which they could be associated with (Paivio,

1965). For the concrete word pairs pencil (7.70) and tree (6.77) had the highest

concreteness and imagery ratings respectively (Paivio, 1968). Woman (6.63) and string

(6.20) had the lowest concreteness and imagery ratings respectively (Paivio, 1968). For

the abstract word pairs, series (3.88, 4.47) had the highest concreteness and imagery

ratings, while idea (1,42) and soul (2.13) had the lowest concreteness and imagery ratings

respectively (Paivio et al, 1968), The measures of the concreteness and imagery ratings

showed that there was high criterion validity with the Paivio et al, (1968) study.

However, there was no measure of reliability for the word pairs.

Sleep and Memory 268

Procedure

Participants were randomly assigned into one of four possible conditions, awake

abstract, awake concrete, sleep abstract or sleep concrete. The random assignment was

done by flipping a coin to determine which condition the participant was assigned to, and

the coin tossing was done before participants were recruited. Participants in the awake

condition performed the memorization phase during the morning, and then performed the

testing phase 12 hours later at night. Conversely, participants in the sleep condition took

the memorization task at night, and then took the test in the morning 12 hours later. This

was done to ensure that the participant would get some sleep between the memorization

phase and the testing phase. The participants in the abstract condition were given the

abstract word pairs, while participants in the concrete condition were given the concrete

word pairs.

Participants would first read over the letter of consent, and then give their consent

to participate in the study. Depending on what number the participant was, it determined

which condition he or she would be put into by the previous random assignment. The

participant would then be given the word list and told to memorize it. The participant was

tested on the word list after he or she had felt he or she had memorized it. This was done

to ensure that this list was actually memorized before the testing phase. During this stage

the participant had unlimited time to memorize the word list, but the participant had to

say the list verbally twice without looking or without any errors before they could move

on to the testing phase of the study. The researcher would test the participant by asking

them to fill in the missing word from each pair, and this was done by stating the first
Sleep and Memory 269

word of each pair and having the participant state the second word in the pair. After the

participant had completed the memorization task, the researcher noted the time the phase

was completed and told the participant that 12 hours later they would be tested on

Facebook using the same word pairs.

The participant was released from the study and carried on with their day or night.

The researcher sent a message on Facebook to the participant giving them the instructions

to open the message at the specified time the participant was told after the memorization

phase. Once the participant opened the message, they were given instructions to fill in the

missing word pairs, and if they did not know what to put, they were to leave it blank or

guess. After they were done, they were told to send it back to the researcher and then the

participant would be given the debriefing form. During this testing phase, a different set

of words was taken away. Please refer to appendix B to see which words were missing.

Five words from the first column remained, while only 3 words from the second column

remained. This was the same for both conditions, and this was done to keep consistency.

Participants were blind to which conditions they were in.

Results

A 2 X 2 between-subjects ANOVA was performed on the dependent variable

recall and the two independent variables concreteness and sleep/awake conditions. The

results showed that there was no significant main effects for concreteness F(l,20) = 2.91,

p > .05, n.s. with participants who learned the concrete word pairs ( M = 7.5, SD = 0.8) or

the abstract word pairs ( M = 6.75, SD = 1.36). There was also no significant main effect

for the sleep/awake conditions F(l,20) = 1.76, p > .05, n.s. with participants in the sleep

condition ( M = 7.42 , SD = .79) or participants in the awake condition ( M = 6.83, SD =

Sleep and Memory 270

1.40). There was also no significant interaction between concreteness and sleep/awake on

recall F(l,20) = 1.76, p >.05, n.s. As figure 1 shows, participants who had to recall the

concrete word pairs, had the same means regardless if they were in the sleep and concrete

condition. The lowest mean was in the abstract condition when participants were awake.

Discussion

Unlike previous research the current study failed to support that sleep had a

significant influence on recall. The results showed no significant interactions or main

effects. This is likely due to many methodological issues that are in this study. The first

issue is about the recall task itself. There were some concerns that it would not be

difficult enough, but since the testing phase involved a rather unique method of testing, it

was assumed that difficulty would not be an issue. However, since that only two people

recalled less than 6 out of 8 words and there were 13 scores of 8, the task did not prove

challenging enough. This proved that the word list was not an appropriate measure and

because of this it likely influenced the results of the study. In previous studies like the

Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) study, in the awake condition participants hardly

remembered any non-sense syllables at the 8 hour interval, It was thought that since the

interval was being increased to 12 hours, recall would be even worse. But this was not the

case, and recall was much better in the current study than in the Jenkins and Dallenbach

(1924) study. This could also be attributed to the different types of measures. Jenkins and

Dallenbach (1924) used non-sense syllables, and this could have been more difficult to

remember than actual words.

Another problem with the study was the lack of control. After the participants had

completed the leaming trial, the researcher could not stop the participant from writing
Sleep and Memory 271

• ~ ~ — Sleep
7

• Awake
6 ;

5 '

Concrete Abstract
Word Pairs

Figure 1. Shows the average number of words recalled for the sleep/concrete

condition (n = 6), sleep/abstract condition (n = 6), awake/concrete condition (n =

6), and awake/abstract condition (n = 6).

Sleep and Memory 272

down the word pairs and consistently memorize them before they were tested again 12

hours later. While participants were separated during testing, they could have tried to talk

to another participant in the study and compared answers. It was assumed that most

participants would not do either of these things, however, there was no way to control for

it. The final methodological issue was the difficulty of time. When the participants

completed the learning phase, they were told that 12 hours later they had to answer the

message on Facebook. Nevertheless, some participants would take the test 2 hours earlier

or later than they were suppose to, and this data could not be counted. This happened on

several occasions and the participants were still debriefed, but their data was not

recorded.

Another limitation of the study was the sample size and population. The sample

size of the study was small and ideally researchers want 40 or more participants for a 2 X

2 ANOVA, to increase the likelihood of significant results. But unfortunately due to the

demanding nature of the study, it was difficult to recruit participants into the study. Since

participants in the study all went to university it could affect the results because

university students, especially psychology students, are generally more knowledgeable

about memorization strategies.

The final methodological issue is the reliability of the measure. When Paivio

(1965) used the same word pairs in the current study, he used a random set of words for

every trial, so there was no measure of reliability in his study. There was also no

reliability for the measure that was used in this study; this could have influenced the

results of the study. The researcher should have tested the reliability of the measure

before performing the study.

Sleep and Memory 273

Future studies should increase the word pair size to 12 concrete or abstract words

instead of 8. When testing the participants, researchers should have six stimulus words

using the first word in the word pairs, and six stimulus words using the second word in

the pair. This should be done randomly, so it is just not an altering from first word to

second every other trial. However, the overall pattem should be the same for each testing

trial. These changes should increase the task difficulty of the measure. The researcher in

future studies should test the reliability of the word pairs before using them, in order to

ensure that it would be a reliable measure.

Future studies should also get a bigger and a more varied sample population than

the one in the current study. A different sample population would allow for more

generalization to the normal population. Finally, i f possible future studies should consider

the use of a sleep lab or consider having participants nap for a certain period of time after

testing. This would solve many of the control and methodological issues of the current

study.

The current study failed to reproduce the results of previous research on sleep and

memory. Sleep did not significantly influence participant's recall of word pairs. This was

likely due to the methodological issues of the study. Future studies should consider

keeping a similar design but improving the measure and if possible make use of a sleep

lab.
Sleep and Memory 274

References

Gais, S., Molle, M., Helms, K., & Bom, J. (2002). Learning-Dependent Increases in
Sleep Spindle Density. The Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 6830-6834.

Jenkins, J. G., & Dallenbach, K. M . (1924). Obliviscence During Sleep and Waking.
American Journal of Psychology, 35, 605-612.

Paivio, A. (1965). Abstractness, Imagery, and Meaningfulness in Paired-Associate

Leaming. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 4, 32-38.

Paivio, A., Yuille, J. C., & Madigan, S. A. (1968). Concreteness, Imagery, and
Meaningfulness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Monograph Supplement,
76, 1-25.

Payne, J. D., Schacter, D. L., Propper, R. E., Huang, L., Wamsley, E. J,, Tucker, M . A.,
Walker, M . P., & Stickgold, R. (2009). The role of sleep in false memory
formation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 92, 327-334,

Plihal, W., & Bom, J. (1997). Effects of Early and Late Noctumal Sleep on Declarative
and Procedural Memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 534-547.

Stickgold, R., Whidbee, D., Schirmer, B., Patel, V., & Hobson, J. A. (2000). Visual
Discrimination Task Improvement: A Multi-Step Process Occurring During
Sleep. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 246-254.

Wagner, U., Gais, S., & Bom, J. (2001). Emotional Memory Formation Is Enhanced
Across Sleep Intervals with High Amounts of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep.
Learning and Memory, 8, 112-119.

Appendix A

ANOVA Summary Table for Concreteness and Sleep/Awake Interaction with Recall

Source SS df MS F P

Concreteness 3.38 1 3.38 2.91 .13 A3

Sleep/A wake 2.04 1 2.04 1.76 .2 .08
Concretness* Sleep/Awake 2.04 1 2.04 1.76 .2 .08
Error 23.17 20 1.16
Total 30.63 23

Note; All numbers were rounded in order to keep with APA standards, of two decimal
places.
Sleep and Memory 275

Appendix B

Word List 1

String Tree

Coffee Dress

Shoes House

Pencil Garden

Wheat Potato

Women River

Chair Magazine

Flower Star

Word List 2

Idea Moment

Soul Opinion

Effort Freedom

Series Health

Truth Duty

Fate Theory

Event Fact

Virtue History
Sleep and Memory

Test 1

String

Dress

Shoes

Pencil

Potato

Women

Magazine

Flower

Test 2

Idea

Opinion

Effort

Series

Duty

Fate

Fact

Virtue
Sleep and Memory 277

Appendix C

Number of Words Recalled by Each Participant

Conditions Concrete Abstract

Sleep 6 8
8 8
8 7
7 6
8 8
8 7
Awake 6 4
8 8
8 5
8 6
7 8
8 6
Total words recalled 90 81