Can People Learn While Sleeping?

Studies Proving and Contradicting Hypnopaedia

May 21, 2009 Cheryn Tan

The idea that one can absorb knowledge without conscious effort must certainly appeal to frantic students burning the midnight oil for the next morning's examination.

Studies have shown that on average, humans spend almost one-third of their lives sleeping. If all this time could be used in a more productive way, it would positively maximise the limited life spans of humans – one may be able to pick up new skills, master scientific principles, even learn a new language.

Sinister Propaganda - Brave New World

In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, hypnopaedia was discovered after a Polish-speaking boy named Reuben Rabinovitch, fell asleep while listening to an English radio broadcast by George Bernard Shaw. When he awoke, he could recite what he had heard, word for word – even though he was English-illiterate! His parents thought he had gone mad.

Eventually, however, they learned that hypnopaedia could be used as a sinister propaganda tool in an elaborate conditioning process, to control society and ensure conformity. Sleeping children listened to reruns of messages according to their designated social classes, from Alphas being fed lessons that the common good ranked above individual desires, to Gammas being taught to be content that they were not being worked as extensively as the higher classes.

19th Century Tests in Hypnopaedia

The notion that learning can occur while sleeping may seem like a fantastical tale straight out of a science fiction novel. But in the mid-19th century, scientists conducted studies that actually proved that hypnopaedia is possible.

In 1952, B. Fox and J. Robbin conducted a successful experiment whereby their subjects listened to a recording of 25 Chinese words and the English translation in a 29-minute sleep. Compared to the control group, who listened to music, they had a significantly increased comprehension of the language when they awoke.

Lawrence LeShan tested the theory of behavioural change through hypnopaedia on 20 nail-biters in 1942. After listening to a tape which said, “My fingernails taste terribly bitter,” 300 times for 54 successive nights, 40% of the subjects quit their nail-biting habit.

Another study proving hypnopaedia could enhance learning memory was conducted in 1948 by Charles Elliot at the University of North Carolina. Out of 40 test subjects, half listened to a recording of 15 three-letter words repeated at intervals, while the other half slept undisturbed for three hours.

When they awoke, all of them listened to the list. The ones who had heard it in their sleep memorised the list of words in no time, whereas the latter half took much longer. Elliott thus concluded that sleep-teaching is similar to reteaching something a person has temporarily forgotten.

EEG Has the Final Word

However, the effectiveness of sleep learning has been largely disputed ever since the electroencephalography (EEG) studies by Charles Simon and William Emmons in 1956. The researchers discovered that the stimulus material presented during sleep was not recalled later when the subject woke up.

The only exception, they found, was when stimulus material was given at the same time while alpha waves were recorded on the EEG graph. Alpha activity occurs in the brain when the subject is awake and in a relaxed state, indicating that subjects only retained what they heard just before they awoke. This finding essentially proves learning while sleeping was “impractical and probably impossible,” as Simons and Emmons put it.

Even though hypnopaedia is not widely practised today, there is still ongoing interest and research in the field by neuroscientists. Related fields of study include the use of sleep therapy to boost learning in healthy individuals, and using sleep therapy to aid in the recovery from brain injuries.

References:

Fox, B & Robbin, J. (1952). "The retention of material presented during sleep". Journal of Experimental Psychology, 43, 75-79.

Fromm, E. & Shor, R. (1979) Hypnosis: Developments in research and new perspectives. New York: Aldine

Leshan, L. (1942). "The breaking of a habit by suggestion during sleep". Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 37, 406-408.

Time (1948) "Learn While You Sleep". Accessed from

<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,855919,00.html>

The copyright of the article Can People Learn While Sleeping? in Psychology is owned by Cheryn Tan. Permission to republish Can People Learn While Sleeping? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Can People Learn in their Sleep?

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Dec 13, 2009 7:57 PM

Guest :

Unless you care about a information, need a information, or very enthusiastic about an information, I believe true learning cannot not occur. If you care about something, you will or cannot sleep. If you do want to sleep, you do not want to care about anything else. True sleep is too precious to be spent in information gathering, and true information too precious to be received in a state of sleep.

If at all there is something to this sleep-learning, it may be not true sleep, but some kind of state where some heightened awareness will/should always there and also the desire/volition to learn.

Feb 1, 2010 11:13 AM

Guest :

Actually in Brave New World, it states clearly that people cannot learn in their sleep. The example of the polish boy is explaining that even though he repeats the radio broadcast in english which he does not speak or understand, he is just repeating it and has not learned anything.

In the book, Huxley presents another example of a boy being "taught" in his sleep. A voice recording is repeated to him in his sleep "The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe...", but when the boy is asked, what is the longest river in Africa? He responds, "I don't know".

When the interviewer says, "But the Nile...", the boy interrupts immediately and finishes the phrase for him. Once again the boy is asked, what is the longest river in Africa, and again he responds, "I don't know".

This book is a work of fiction and it presents the case on how sleep learning is not possible. I don't know why everyone refers to it in an argument FOR hypnopaedia.

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