Sleep-assisted instruction.

Aarons, Louis

doi:10.1037/0033-2909.83.1.1

Cited by 41 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 291 publications

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“…This capacity of infants to learn during sleep stands in contrast to the belief that learning of new material does not take place in sleeping adults (22), although this belief has yet to be tested using methods similar to the current study. It is possible that the greater plasticity of the brains of young animals lends itself to learning under circumstances that would be nonoptimal or prohibitive later in development (23).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Newborn infants learn during sleep

Fifer

Byrd

Kaku

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Newborn infants must rapidly adjust their physiology and behavior to the specific demands of the novel postnatal environment. This adaptation depends, at least in part, on the infant's ability to learn from experiences. We report here that infants exhibit learning even while asleep. Bioelectrical activity from face and scalp electrodes was recorded from neonates during an eye movement conditioning procedure in which a tone was followed by a puff of air to the eye. Sleeping newborns rapidly learned the predictive relationship between the tone and the puff. Additionally, in the latter part of training, these infants exhibited a frontally maximum positive EEG slow wave possibly reflecting memory updating. As newborns spend most of their time sleeping, the ability to learn about external stimuli in the postnatal environment during nonawake states may be crucial for rapid adaptation and infant survival. Furthermore, because eyelid conditioning reflects functional cerebellar circuitry, this method potentially offers a unique approach for early identification of infants at risk for a range of developmental disorders including autism and dyslexia.EEG | eyelid conditioning | neonate D uring the first days of life, awake infants are capable of learning associations between oral motor patterns and altered milk flow (1) and can learn to alter sucking to produce a variety of reinforcers, including milk (2), their mother's voice (3, 4), or a sweet-tasting solution (5). Cross-sensory associative learning also has been demonstrated in awake neonates using paired auditory and visual stimuli (6, 7). Furthermore, awake newborns show Pavlovian conditioning to tactile (8) and taste stimuli (9, 10), as well as eyelid conditioning to paired auditory and tactile stimuli (11). These early adaptations to the postnatal environment have been well documented in awake infants, but as newborns spend the vast majority of their time asleep, the need and capacity to learn may not be confined to states of wakefulness.Even while asleep, neonates are able to process external information actively. Scalp recordings of brain activity in sleeping neonates have demonstrated their capacity to differentiate between two sounds (12-14), indicating that infants are forming representations of specific stimuli and distinguishing between those stimuli during sleep. We report here that sleeping neonates not only process information about individual events, but also learn about relationships between them.To investigate whether neonates can learn during sleep, we attempted to condition an eye movement response in 1-to 2-dayold infants while they slept. All infants were fed immediately before testing to increase the likelihood they would sleep through the entire procedure. Sleep status was confirmed using behavioral observations in conjunction with heart rate variability patterns, respiratory regularity, and video scoring of the infants' faces. Infants were videotaped while exposed to tones and puffs of air directed at the eyelid. In the experimental group, tones w...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Newborn infants learn during sleep

Fifer

Byrd

Kaku

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Most earlier experiments relating to this question have focused on an individual's ability to recall or recognize a specific item-a spoken word, sentence, or story, for exampleas having occurred in a specific stituation--for instance, while the person was asleep (e.g., Aarons, 1976;Evans. 1972), anesthetized (e.g., Cherkin & Harroun.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory for unattended events: Remembering with and without awareness

1984

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The effects of memory for unattended events-for example, events that occur while a person is asleep, anesthetized, or selectively attending to other ongoing events, as in a speechshadowing task-are rarely revealed in tests of retention that require remembering to be deliberate or intentional. Might such effects become evident in tests that do not demand awareness of remembering? Results of the present shadowing study, involving the recognition and spelling of previously unattended homophones. suggest an affirmative answer to this question.

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“…Consolidation is drastically reduced for material presented during sleep, particularly slow-wave sleep (40)(41)(42). Whether the reason for this is the presence of a biochemical substance, such as growth hormone, as suggested by Ekstrand et al (19) and Hoddes (43), or a decrease in some aspect of physiological arousal, it seems plausible that the effect may still be present to some extent after waking, thus impairing the consolidation in long-term memory of material learned at this time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Sleep Before or After Learning on Memory

Grosvenor

Lack

1984

Sleep

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Summary: Early studies in which it was found that learning followed by sleep was better remembered than learning followed by wakefulness were interpreted as giving support for the Interference Theory of Forgetting. More recent studies have shown better retention over the first half of the night's sleep (slow-wave sleep) than over the second half (REM sleep), and conclusions have been drawn that a Decay Theory of Forgetting is more strongly supported. Those studies, however, confounded the type of sleep following learning with sleep prior to learning. When prior sleep was controlled in the present study, there was no support for a first half-night sleep benefit, and, contrary to Decay Theory, there was a second half-night benefit for high imagery material. The strong detrimental effect of sleep prior to learning was inconsistent with the Interference Theory of Forgetting and suggested, instead, the importance of the consolidation process for long-term memory. Key Words: Sleep stages-Long-term memory-Forgetting theories-Memory consolidation.In the present study we examined several variables which have, in the past, been shown to mediate the effects of sleep on memory. These are the post-learning condition (sleep or wakefulness), prior learning condition (sleep or wakefulness), physiological arousal, length of the retention interval, and type of material learned.Jenkins and Dallenbach (1) discovered that subjects who slept following learning remembered more than subjects who were awake for the same length of time. They used this finding as support for the Interference Theory of Forgetting, since it was assumed that interference learning would be reduced during sleep. Although the beneficial effect of sleep on memory has subsequently been confirmed (2-4), the effect of other variables on memory has raised some doubt regarding the Interference Theory. The finding that sleep is most beneficial to memory when it follows learning immediately rather than later (5-7) seems to implicate differential effects on a consolidation process of memory. Studies that have manipulated the level of arousal directly (8,9)

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Sleep-assisted instruction.

Cited by 41 publications

References 291 publications

Newborn infants learn during sleep

Newborn infants learn during sleep

Memory for unattended events: Remembering with and without awareness

The Effect of Sleep Before or After Learning on Memory

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