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Gender difference in the effect of daytime sleep on declarative memory for pictures

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Abstract

Objective

To investigate gender difference in the effects of daytime sleep on item and source memories, which are dissociable elements of declarative memory, and the effects of sleep on recollection and familiarity, which are two processes underlying recognition.

Methods

Participants saw a series of pictures with either blue or red background, and were then given a pretest for item and source memories. Then males and females respectively were randomly assigned either to a wake or a sleep condition. In the wake condition, participants remained awake until the posttest; in the sleep condition, participants slept for 1 h until awakened and asked to remain awake until the posttest.

Results

Daytime sleep contributed to retention of source memory rather than item memory in females, whereas males undergoing daytime sleep had a trend towards increased familiarity. For females, however, neither recollection nor familiarity appeared to be influenced by daytime sleep.

Conclusion

The mechanism underlying gender difference may be linked with different memory traces resulting from different encoding strategies, as well as with different electrophysiological changes during daytime sleep.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Bo Wang & Xiao-lan Fu

  2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Bo Wang

Authors
  1. Bo Wang
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  2. Xiao-lan Fu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiao-lan Fu.

Additional information

Project supported partially by the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (No. 2006CB303101) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 90820305)

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Wang, B., Fu, Xl. Gender difference in the effect of daytime sleep on declarative memory for pictures. J. Zhejiang Univ. Sci. B 10, 536–546 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B0820384

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B0820384

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