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Show Sleeping Improves Memory, Tests on Students Reveal Sandman Helps Us to Remember Our Lessons ITHACA, N. Y. If a person memorizes certain kinds of material perfectly, and goes to sleep immediately afterwards, he will recall more of it, and also re-learn the whole task more economically after a lapse of 24 hours, than if he waits even a few hours before he goes to sleep, Dr. H. M. Johnson, professor of psychology of American university, univer-sity, Washington, D. a, announced at Cornell university here. Experiments based on different methods, made by Dr. Rosa Heine Katz, at the University of Got-tingen, Got-tingen, and by Joseph F. O'Brien, graduate student at American university, uni-versity, showed that all the subjects sub-jects who were studied were better aloe to recall and also to relearn material that they had learned by rote and partially forgotten, If they slept for eight hours and then worked for 16 hours, than If they distributed their rest and activity in any other way during the 24-hour period. Vary as to Subjects. The differences in favor of sleeping sleep-ing immediately varied between 20 per cent and 30 per cent, according to the subject and the task. One would be justified In offering a bet of 100,000 to 1 by Mr. O'Brien's results re-sults were not due to chance, Doctor Doc-tor Johnson said. Two explanations have been offered. of-fered. One, which Doctor Johnson called the "hardening" hypothesis, pictures the brain as Inert during sleep, giving recently received Impressions Im-pressions a chance to become "set." The other, called the "reverberation" "reverbera-tion" hypothesis, regards the brain as an active organ even during sleep, and supposes that it goes on repeating or "reverberating" recently recent-ly received Impressions during the unconscious period. Highball Dulls Memory. Doctor Johnson does not regard either hypothesis as satisfactory. The "hardening" hypothesis is cast into doubt by the poor recall ot memorized material made by persons per-sons who had "hardened" their brain with the equivalent of only one highball. Furthermore, very recent studies on brain waves show that these fluctuations In the electric elec-tric potential of the brain go on continuously during sleep, though not In their ordinary "waking" patterns. |