Sleep Declarative Memory

In this article, the authors presented a study in which three experiments were used to determine the effect of sleep on declarative memory, and the researchers hypothesized that sleep does have an impact on declarative memory (Schönauer, Pawlizki, Köck, & Gais, 2014). The purpose of the experiment was to inform the readers about how sleep is crucial to memory in humans. Regarding the design of the experiment, it is set up as experimental, and the article states, “As intended in the experimental design, the amount of time spent in different sleep stages differed significantly between Experiments 1, 2, and 3” (Schönauer et al., 2014, para. 30). The independent variable was the amount of sleep, meditation, or lack of during the sleep conditioning,
Before the sleep conditioning, participants arrived at the laboratory and underwent the learning LGT-3 test battery test for 15 minutes and then underwent the application of EEG electrodes for 30 minutes (Schönauer et al., 2014). In controlling the alertness of the participants, researchers used a PVT after the memory test evaluation, after sleep, after wakefulness, and after meditation (Schönauer et al., 2014). For Experiment 3, post hoc t-tests confirmed the differences between the sleep, wakefulness, and meditation participants (Schönauer et al., 2014). Afterwards, post hoc tests were done to compare the results of the participants in the wakefulness category and the meditation category (Schönauer et al., 2014). Additionally, the experimenters recorded the different types of sleep the participants underwent by distinguishing REM sleep and the proportion of SWS using the EEG (Schönauer et al., 2014). However, researchers used a chi-square test and determined that the participants with or without REM/SWS showed equal improvement (Schönauer et al., 2014, para.
Each experiment demonstrated that the participants who slept had better results for non-verbal memory, memory of associated items, and recognition than those who remained awake or meditated (Schönauer et al., 2014, para. 22). However, sleep did not have a significant impact on verbal memory, memory of single items, or recall, and the data did not definitively prove that sleep affects certain kinds of declarative memory (Schönauer et al., 2014, para.