The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.
Yes, you can learn a foreign language in your sleep, say Swiss psychologists
Study played newly-learned foreign vocabulary to students and compared their memory with those who were played the words while awake
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Subliminal learning in your sleep is usually dismissed as pseudo-science at best and fraud at worst, but a team of Swiss psychologists say you can actually learn a foreign language in your sleep.
Well, not from scratch, but a research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex by the Swiss National Science Foundation claims that listening to newly-learned foreign vocabulary while sleeping can help solidify the memory of the words.
In the study led by biopsychologist Björn Rasch, sixty German-speaking students were asked to learn some Dutch words that they had never seen before at 10pm. Half of the group were then allowed to go to sleep, with the words played back to them, while the other half were kept awake to listen to the words.
The first group was then woken at 2am and all sixty students were tested on the new vocabulary. The scientists found that those who had listened to the Dutch while sleeping were much better at recalling the new words.
The study - first reported by Wired.co.uk – also considered the fact that the group that was kept awake were simply performing worse because they were sleep-deprived, using EEG measurements of the sleeping leaners to show increased activity in the parietal lobe – a part of the brain important in processing language.
This isn’t the same as going to bed with a ‘learn French’ CD and waking up with ‘comment ça va?’ and ‘omelette du fromage’ on your lips, but further testing could confirm that stimulus in our sleep helps consolidate memories.
In fact, in a study from 2012 by the Weizmann Institute of Science scientists were able to condition subjects to associate smells with certain sounds – even while they were asleep.
The researchers concluded: “This acquired behavior persisted throughout the night and into ensuing wake, without later awareness of the learning process. Thus, humans learned new information during sleep.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments