TY - JOUR
T1 - Targeted Memory Reactivation During Sleep Improves Next-Day Problem Solving
AU - Sanders, Kristin E.G.
AU - Osburn, Samuel
AU - Paller, Ken A.
AU - Beeman, Mark
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Susan Florczak, Todd Anderson, Daniel Wetmore, and Sheepdog Sciences for help with the sleep monitoring and cuing system devices. We additionally thank Katherine George, Kira Riley, Megan Conlon, and Lena Goren for data-collection assistance and Sophia McCullough and Carlie Cope for memory-coding assistance. This work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health?s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HD087111) awarded to M. Beeman.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - Many people have claimed that sleep has helped them solve a difficult problem, but empirical support for this assertion remains tentative. The current experiment tested whether manipulating information processing during sleep impacts problem incubation and solving. In memory studies, delivering learning-associated sound cues during sleep can reactivate memories. We therefore predicted that reactivating previously unsolved problems could help people solve them. In the evening, we presented 57 participants with puzzles, each arbitrarily associated with a different sound. While participants slept overnight, half of the sounds associated with the puzzles they had not solved were surreptitiously presented. The next morning, participants solved 31.7% of cued puzzles, compared with 20.5% of uncued puzzles (a 55% improvement). Moreover, cued-puzzle solving correlated with cued-puzzle memory. Overall, these results demonstrate that cuing puzzle information during sleep can facilitate solving, thus supporting sleep’s role in problem incubation and establishing a new technique to advance understanding of problem solving and sleep cognition.
AB - Many people have claimed that sleep has helped them solve a difficult problem, but empirical support for this assertion remains tentative. The current experiment tested whether manipulating information processing during sleep impacts problem incubation and solving. In memory studies, delivering learning-associated sound cues during sleep can reactivate memories. We therefore predicted that reactivating previously unsolved problems could help people solve them. In the evening, we presented 57 participants with puzzles, each arbitrarily associated with a different sound. While participants slept overnight, half of the sounds associated with the puzzles they had not solved were surreptitiously presented. The next morning, participants solved 31.7% of cued puzzles, compared with 20.5% of uncued puzzles (a 55% improvement). Moreover, cued-puzzle solving correlated with cued-puzzle memory. Overall, these results demonstrate that cuing puzzle information during sleep can facilitate solving, thus supporting sleep’s role in problem incubation and establishing a new technique to advance understanding of problem solving and sleep cognition.
KW - creative cognition
KW - incubation
KW - problem solving
KW - restructuring
KW - sleep
KW - targeted memory reactivation
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U2 - 10.1177/0956797619873344
DO - 10.1177/0956797619873344
M3 - Article
C2 - 31603738
AN - SCOPUS:85074284663
VL - 30
SP - 1616
EP - 1624
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
SN - 0956-7976
IS - 11
ER -