Many hypotheses have been proposed to account for the effects of nitrous oxide on memory, with one emerging possibility being that it has a global effect on memory-related functioning. This possibility was explored by examining the effects of nitrous oxide on memory performance and on the accuracy of people's judgments about their memory performance. Participants inhaled 30% nitrous oxide or a placebo gas while items were studied and while judgments were made about the likelihood of recall for each item. Next, all participants inhaled the placebo during paired-associate recall. Although administration of nitrous oxide during study impaired recall, it did not affect the predictive accuracy of the metacognitive judgments. These results provide pharmacological evidence for a distinction between memory and metamemory.

The title hydroxylamine (NT) undergoes pyrene-sensitized photodecomposition to give rearrangement and fragmentation products. An analysis of linear Stern–Volmer plots, both for the sensitized photolysis of NT and for the fluorescence quenching of pyrene by NT, indicates the involvement of singlet pyrene in this photolysis. The observation of negligible effects of 1,3-cyclohexadiene and trans-stilbene as a triplet quencher on the reaction provides further supporting evidence for a singlet-pathway mechanism. A comparison of the relative state energies of NT and the sensitizer suggests the existence of a reactive singlet-exciplex intermediate formed between the singlet-state sensitizer and the ground-state NT. The results of solvent and micellar effects on the sensitized photolysis establish that electron transfer in the exciplex predominates in a polar solvent, and that in a nonpolar solvent energy transfer in this exciplex plays a major role in the reaction.