The impact of sleep on factual memory retention over 24 hr.

factual memory consolidation; sleep; time‐dependency; wakefulness; Humans; Male; Female; Adult; Young Adult; Retention, Psychology/physiology; Time Factors; Sleep/physiology; Mental Recall/physiology; Memory Consolidation/physiology; Wakefulness/physiology; Memory Consolidation; Mental Recall; Retention, Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience; Behavioral Neuroscience

Abstract :

[en] Although a period of sleep seems to benefit the retention of declarative memories, recent studies have challenged both the size of this effect and its active influence on memory consolidation. This study aimed to further investigate the effect of sleep and its time dependency on the consolidation of factual information. In a within-subjects design, 48 participants (Mage = 24.37 ± 4.18 years, 31F) were asked to learn several facts in a multi-sensory "flashcard-like" memory task at 21:00 hours (sleep first condition) or at 09:00 hours (wake first condition). Then, in each condition, participants performed an immediate recall test (T0), and two delayed tests 12 hr (T1) and 24 hr (T2) later. Participants' sleep was recorded at their homes with a portable device. Results revealed that memory retention was better after a night of sleep compared with wakefulness, regardless of the delay from encoding (a few hr versus 12+ hr), but the sleep effect was modest. The decline in memory during the wake period following sleep was smaller compared with the decline observed during the 12 hr of wakefulness after encoding. However, after 24 hr from the encoding, when all participants experienced a period of both sleep and wakefulness, memory performance in the two conditions was similar. Overall, our data suggest that sleep exerts a small, yet beneficial, influence on memory retention by likely reducing interference and actively stabilizing memory traces.

Disciplines :

Theoretical & cognitive psychology

Author, co-author :

Gasparello, Aurora ^✱; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de Biologie, Ecologie et Evolution ; Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

Baldassarri, Angie ^✱; Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

Degasperi, Giorgia ; Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

Cellini, Nicola ; Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

^✱ These authors have contributed equally to this work.

Language :

English

Title :

The impact of sleep on factual memory retention over 24 hr.

Publication date :

April 2024

Journal title :

Journal of Sleep Research

ISSN :

0962-1105

eISSN :

1365-2869

Publisher :

John Wiley and Sons Inc, England

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

e14237

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jsr.14237

Funding text :

The research was conducted within the research activity of the Department of General Psychology of the University of Padua. The authors thank Sara Caccia and Aurora Babbi for contributing to data collection, and Damiana Bergamo and Margherita Calderan for their feedbacks in the manuscript preparation.

Available on ORBi :

since 11 February 2025

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