Conscious Perception and Implicit Memory Formation of a Narrative Presented During Sleep

The present study sought to determine the extent of conscious awareness and implicit memory formation of a narrative presented during sleep. Participants were played an excerpt of J.D. Salinger’s Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes while napping. Afterwards, participants completed a task designed to assess implicit memory to determine if they had formed any memories about words that were either directly stated in the story, or directly related to the plot. Participants who heard the story while asleep responded more quickly to words that had appeared in the story than to words from another story they had not heard. Exactly the same pattern of results was observed in a second group of participants who heard the same story while fully awake. These findings suggest that sleepers are capable of higher-level processing of complex naturalistic stimuli and can form implicit memories of this information like wakeful participants, despite lacking explicit awareness