Memory for Semantically Related and Unrelated Declarative Information: The Benefit of Sleep, the Cost of Wake. Numerous studies have examined sleep's influence on a range of hippocampus-dependent declarative memory tasks, from text learning to spatial navigation.
In this study, we examined the impact of sleep, wake, and time-of-day influences on the processing of declarative information with strong semantic links (semantically related word pairs) and information requiring the formation of novel associations (unrelated word pairs). Participants encoded a set of related or unrelated word pairs at either 9am or 9pm, and were then tested after an interval of 30 min, 12 hr, or 24 hr. The time of day at which subjects were trained had no effect on training performance or initial memory of either word pair type. At 12 hr retest, memory overall was superior following a night of sleep compared to a day of wakefulness.
However, this performance difference was a result of a pronounced deterioration in memory for unrelated word pairs across wake; there was no sleep-wake difference for related word pairs. Google Brain: Are We Losing Our Memory to the Search Giant? Google is great for looking up words, finding movie times or perusing recipes, but recent research out of Columbia University shows our dependence on Internet search may be hurting our memory.
The Internet has replaced our brain's ability to remember information we could easily search for online, a study led by neuroscientist Betsy Sparrow shows. While we heavy Internet users remember where to search for information, we have forgotten information itself. Just as computers use external hard drives to store information, our brains use the Internet as a back up.
Many of us are rarely without an Internet connection, meaning we can rely on the memory of where we read something online. As a result, we often forget information we don't think we will need again. "People actively do not make the effort to remember when they think they can look up information later," the study's authors write. Furthermore, we go into withdrawal when we can't find something online. Why People’s Names Are So Hard to Remember. Names are more difficult to remember than people’s jobs, hobbies or home towns.
One study gave participants fake names and biographies to study (Cohen & Faulkner, 1986). Then they were tested on what they could remember. Here are the percentages for different pieces of information that were recalled: Jobs: 69%Hobbies: 68%Home towns: 62%First names: 31%Last names: 30% So names are more difficult to remember than what people do, what their hobbies are and where they come from. But, why? All kinds of theories have been put forward. The most popular explanation in the research is that names are essentially arbitrary and meaningless. Mnemonics.