"You Will Remember Forever"

For years sleep researchers have suspected--in the face of considerable doubt--that learning during slumber is a possibility. Now scientists have come up with what they believe to be the first clear-cut evidence that such effortless learning can take place.

Experimenting with 20 high school and college students who had never studied Russian, Psychologists C. Michael Levy and Wilse B. Webb of the University of Florida undertook to teach them six Russian nouns and their English meanings. For two nights, just before the students dropped off to sleep, they heard a "conditioning tape" that assured them they would learn while they slept if they were willing to do so. For the next five nights, when they had fallen asleep, the students heard a recording of the paired nouns after a taped voice identified as that of "your Russian teacher" promised that "you will remember these words and their meanings forever." The results: a recall rate that ranged from 10% when the tapes were played early in the night to 30% when they were played toward morning.

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