Reduced false memory after sleep
- Kimberly M. Fenn1,7,
- David A. Gallo2,3,
- Daniel Margoliash2,3,4,5,
- Henry L. Roediger III6 and
- Howard C. Nusbaum2,3,4
- 1Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA;
- 2Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA;
- 3Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA;
- 4Neuroscience Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA;
- 5Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA;
- 6Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
Abstract
Several studies have shown that sleep contributes to the successful maintenance of previously encoded information. This research has focused exclusively on memory for studied events, as opposed to false memories. Here we report three experiments showing that sleep reduces false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) memory illusion. False recognition of nonstudied words was reduced after sleep, relative to an equal retention interval of wakefulness, with no change in correct recognition of studied words. These experiments are the first to show that false memories can be reduced following sleep, and they extend the benefits of sleep to include increased accuracy of episodic memory.
Footnotes
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↵7 Corresponding author.
E-mail kfenn{at}msu.edu; fax (517) 432-2476.
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[Supplemental material is available online at www.learnmem.org.]
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Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.1500808.
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- Received June 6, 2009.
- Accepted June 23, 2009.
- Copyright © 2009 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
