
Studies of Psychology and Behavior >
Sleep-Associated Memory Consolidation in Chinese New Word Learning
Received date: 2024-09-06
Online published: 2025-07-18
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Research indicates that a prolonged period of time is needed for a new word to become integrated with the existing lexicon and generate stable and long-lasting memory representations, with sleep playing an important role in the offline consolidation of this process (known as sleep-associated memory consolidation). This study explored the effects of immediate and delayed sleep on the semantic learning of new Chinese words using rare, real ancient Chinese animal names. Forty-one university students were divided into two groups: a sleep-wake group that learned at night and a wake-sleep group that learned in the morning. Participants were tested immediately after learning, and again after 12 and 24 hours. Results showed that in the explicit word representation tasks, the sleep-wake group had greater performance improvement at the 12-hour mark (compared to immediately after learning) than the wake-sleep group, indicating that immediate sleep aids memory consolidation, with the advantage persisting for 24 hours in the definition task. However, the wake-sleep group showed greater improvement at 24 hours (compared to 12 hours), indicating that delayed sleep can also effectively consolidate memory, performing comparably to immediate sleep in the picture-naming task. In the implicit size judgment task, both immediate and delayed sleep promoted the semantic integration of new words, though in different ways. These findings support the dual role of sleep in both active consolidation and passive protection of memory.
Key words: sleep-associated memory consolidation; words learning; Chinese
Nina LIU , Wentao SUN , Jie YU , Qiancheng GAO , Shihui WU . Sleep-Associated Memory Consolidation in Chinese New Word Learning[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2025 , 23(3) : 289 -296 . DOI: 10.12139/j.1672-0628.2025.03.001
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