Media release

From: The Royal Society

A registered report testing the effect of sleep on DRM false memory: Greater lure and veridical recall but fewer intrusions after sleep

Royal Society Open Science

Research indicates that sleep affects how we remember things, including those that never actually happened. In experiments using word lists, where related words like nurse, hospital, and sick are studied, people often mistakenly recall a non-presented word like doctor, which represents the gist of the word list. A new study involving 488 participants completed memory recall immediately or 12 hours after studying the word lists. Participants who slept in the 12-hour delay correctly recalled more presented words, falsely generated more non-presented gist words, but produced fewer irrelevant errors. This suggests that sleep has a complex role in memory, influencing not only memory retention but potentially the nature of the memory.

• Counting sheepdogs – The influence of sleep on memory may extend beyond improving recall, also increasing the occurrence of false memories. Participants (n=488) were asked to recall a list of words 12 hours later. Those who slept in the 12-hour period recalled more of the listed words than those who didn’t sleep, but were also more likely to give related words that weren’t on the list. These results add to a growing understanding of the role of sleep in memory. Royal Society Open Science