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Show Moab Student Wins Masters In Experimental Psychology James N. West, son of Mr. and Mrs. John W. West, Moab, Mo-ab, received his Master of Arts Degree in Experimental Psychology from the University Uni-versity of Colorado in December Decem-ber graduation ceremonies. Mr. West's thesis, entitled "Retention over Intervals of REM and NonREM Sleep", dealt with memory for verbal ver-bal material learned before the onset of sleep, and recalled recall-ed sveral hours later. In recent re-cent sleep research, investigators investi-gators have found that humans hu-mans get most of their deep sleep (stage IV sleep) in the first half of the night, and do most of their dreaming in the second half of the night (stage REM, which . stands for rapid eye movement sleep). In related experiments, Mr, West and his associates have found that memory (measured (measur-ed by one's ability to recall a list of words after a fixed time interval) is much better after sleep than after wakefulness. wake-fulness. Further, a person's memory is better over the first half than over the second sec-ond half of the night. This suggests that stage IV sleep (deep sleep) may in some way facilitate memory for events learned during the day, and dreaming may hinder hin-der .the memorization pro-cess. pro-cess. Experiments designed to shed further light on this (phenomena and others are continuing at the "Research Center for the Study of Sleep and Dreams", where Mr. West and other graduate students stu-dents are supported as research re-search assistants by the National Na-tional Institute of Mental Health. ;, During the past semester, Mr. West served as a teaching teach-ing assistant for a graduate psychology statistics course, and helped instruct emotionally emotion-ally distrubed children at the Boulder Mental Health Center Cen-ter as part of a Behavior Modification seminar. Jim and his wife Judy reside in Boulder, Colorado where he is currently working on his Doctorate in the field of hu. man memory and cognition. |