title: Time of day accounts for overnight improvement in sequence learning.
abstract: The theory that certain skills improve with a night of sleep has received considerable interest in recent years. However, because sleep typically occurs at the same time of day in humans, it is difficult to separate the effects of sleep from those of time of day. By using a version of the Serial Response Time Task, we assessed the role of sleep in implicit sequence learning while controlling for possible time-of-day effects. We replicated the apparent benefit of sleep on human participants. However, our data show that sleep does not affect implicit sequence learning; rather, time of day affects the ability of participants to express what they have learned.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA. aysha@virginia.edu
authors.forename: Aysha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Keisler
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ashe
authors.forename: Daniel T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Willingham
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002940:Circadian Rhythm; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors