Sleep-learning
Sleep-learning (also known as hypnopædia) attempts to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them whilst they sleep.
This technique is often moderately effective at making people remember direct passages or facts, word for word. However, there is little to no evidence that a person undergoing hypnopædia is actually learning anything in the sense that the newly acquired knowledge is connected to other knowledge or conceptualized in any way.
In Fiction
- In Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, it is used for the conditioning of children into the novel's fictional future culture. In the novel, sleep-learning is supposed to have been discovered after a Polish-speaking boy named Reuben Rabinovitch was able to recite an entire radio broadcast in English after listening to it in his sleep. The boy was unable to comprehend what he had heard via hypnopaedia, but it was soon realized that hypnopaedia could be used to effectively make suggestions about morality.
- In the computer game Outpost 2 the amount of time required to train workers into scientists can be reduced through a research topic called Hypnopaedia, which causes them to learn in their sleep.
- In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer orders hypnopaedia tapes which are supposed to induce weight loss. However, the mail-order company sends him vocabulary builder tapes instead, and Homer gets fatter and fatter while his vocabulary increases exponentially.
See also
References
- Leshan, L. (1942). The breaking of a habit by suggestion during sleep. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 37, 406-408.
- Fox, B.H., & Robbin, J.S. (1952). The retention of material presented during sleep. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 43, 75-79.
- Emmons W. H., Simon C. W. The non-recall of material presented during sleep. Am J Psychol. 1956 Mar;69(1):76-81.
External links
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