Foreign Language skills improves by Listening to Vocabulary in Sleep, study shows

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A research project from Oxford University by Thomas Schreiner and Björn Rasch has put the hypothesis that listening to a foreign language during sleep can help improve vocabulary. Since sleep has a beneficial role in memory consolidation. To investigate the hypothesis in practice totally 68 healthy humans were involved whereof 32 female that was divided into four different groups. Everybody had German mother tongue and without any Dutch language skills where the vocabulary learning task consisted of 120 Dutch words and their German translation. The words were randomly presented in three learning rounds. The participants entered the laboratory and the session started with the application of electrodes for standard polysomnography. Prior to the experiment, participants of the sleep group spent an adaptation night in the sleep laboratory. The outcome of the project shows that: “As expected, re-exposure to Dutch words improved later memory for the German translation of the cued words, when cueing occurred during sleep.” Source: Oxford University