The Effects of Sleep on Memory Performance

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The Effects of Sleep on Memory Performance

• Shannon Hasler
• Tracey Young

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Introduction

• Our Hypothesis
• As the quantity of sleep increases, memory
  performance also increases.
• Poor quality of sleep results in memory deficits.
• Non-REM sleep produces beneficial memory
  functioning rather than REM sleep.

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Introduction

• It has been documented that memory is superior
  after sleep than after a period of regular awake
  activity (Hockey, Davies, Gray, 1972).
• Night sleep is seemingly superior to day sleep in
  terms of memory.
• Sleep during the early part of the night produces
  a higher rate of remembering than sleep during
  the latter part of the night. (Hockey et al.).

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Introduction

• The brain waves studied during the earlier half
  of the night were slow and large, characteristic
  of non-REM sleep, while the waves of the latter
  half of the night/morning were the active, rapid
  waves closely resembling REM waves. Hockey et
  al. found that forgetting was reduced with the
  slow large waves were present, which appear
  during non-REM sleep.

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Method

• Participants 30 randomly selected Acadia
  University students.
• Materials Two questionnaires were used
• assessing subjects quality, quantity, and type of
  sleep.
• assessing the subjects short-term and long-term
  memory performance.
• Procedure A total score for each variable was
  obtained via adding up the responses for each
  variable and analyzed statistically via simple
  regression.

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Results

• Quality was found to be significant for both
  short-term (Y11.10 .350x, 18.1 proportion
  variance) and long-term memory (Y 10.97
  .427x, 16.6 proportion variance).
• Quantity was found to be not significant for
  either short-term memory (Y 19.18 .027x, 0
  proportion variance) or for long-term memory (Y
  4.29 1.70x, 12 proportion variance).

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Results

• Type of sleep was found to be significant for
  short-term (Y 11.58 .628x, 18.5 proportion
  variance) and but not significant for long-term
  (Y16.30 .387x, 4.3 proportion variance)
  memory performance.

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Discussion

• The effect of sleep quality suggests that in
  order to enhance both types of memory, adequate
  sleep quality is required.
• Since quantity of sleep seems to have no effect
  on either type of memory, sleeping for a greater
  number of hours will not result in enhanced
  memory.
• For better short-term memory, non-REM sleep is
  necessary but has no effect on long-term memory.

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Future Research

• We thought that maybe in the future one could do
  an experimental research by having subjects
  assessed during their sleep to study their wave
  patterns, to control the amount of sleep one
  intakes, and to determine the quality of their
  sleep.
• To study the subjects memory performance,
  researchers could require a task for both
  short-term and long-term mental functioning.

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Questions or Comments???