Modern Sleep Learning

There have been many scientific advances since the days of the ancients. We do not forsake our homes and sleep in temples where priests whisper the right thoughts into our ears. Today, through the use of highly developed audio equipment, pre-recorded tapes and recordings and automatic repeating devices, we ourselves can record the message we require.

In 1929 Max Sherover, one of the pioneers in sleep-learning, wrote a science-fiction story called "Cerebro-phone, Inc." Here was an apparently fanciful excursion into the realm of sleep-education.

Later, Sherover and a San Francisco engineer, Elmer Brown, produced the first sleep learning device, using a combination of record player, electric clock, and under-the-pillow-speaker. They foresaw use of their invention in the fields of language teaching, treatment of emotional upsets, overcoming of speech defects, and (shades of Aldous Huxley) principle indoctrination.

In the early 1940's, L. Leshan reported in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology that he found in his tests with this method that 40% of a group of fingernail biters became convinced by the message in the night that their fingernails tasted bitter, and gave up the habit, after being exposed to the message six times a night for fifty-four nights. In the same experiment a control group kept right on biting.

In the original testing of Sherover's machine, Charles R. Elliot of the University of North Carolina used fifteen unrelated three letter words on his sleeping subjects: boy, egg, say, art, run, not, sir, leg, bag, row, ice, out, age, box and eat. He verified that his subjects were asleep by an electroencephalograph, which records brain waves. (Brain waves are different during sleep and wakeful-ness. )

The next day, this group, and a control group who had not heard the words in their sleep were asked to memorize the list of words. The first group learned the list 83% faster than the group which had not been exposed to the words in their sleep. Elliot said he thought sleep-teaching was similar to reteaching something the person has temporarily forgotten.

Sherover reported that his students were learning languages 25% to 30% faster than students normally learn while awake.

In 1948 Sherover prophesied that the device could be used to teach such necessary information as multiplication tables, chemical formulae, the Morse Code, logarithms, speeches, vocabularies and languages. He was indeed conservative in his forecasts.

It was in 1949 that Ramon Vinay's feat in sleep-learning a complete opera in accentless Italian became celebrated in musical circles.

A 1952 newspaper report (New York Times, July 6th) informs us that the Morse Code was taught to sleeping cadets.

In 1952 the Journal of Experimental Psychology reported tests which had been conducted at George Washington University. Students were taught Chinese during sleep, between two-thirty and three A.M. The students were divided into three groups: the first group heard the Chinese words, but with mismatched English words; the second group heard the Chinese words and their English equivalents; the third group heard Strauss waltzes.

The first group required 11.1 repetitions; the second group mastered them in only 5.6 repetitions, and the third group needed 17.7 repetitions (so far as we know this group was not tested on their knowledge of Strauss waltzes).

An interesting side effect was the report of a girl who dreamed she was on a street in China; this was assumed to be the influence of the Chinese words she heard in her sleep. Naturally, this cannot be proved; the dream could have been caused by other associations. But it does invite speculations as to the degree of unconscious visual reinforcement present in sleep-learning.

Bruno Furst, the memory expert, stated that good memory is based on concentration and association, grouping of similar facts together, and then linking them by easy to remember mental pictures.