Sleep-learning
Sleep-learning (also known as hypnopædia) attempts to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep.
This now-discredited technique was supposed to be moderately effective at making people remember direct passages or facts, word for word. The purported weakness of hypnopædia was that such learning would be entirely by rote, unconnected to other knowledge and conceptually void.
While sleep-learning does not actually work in real life, it was explored in earnest by scientists during the early twentieth century and has found its way into some influential science fiction and other literature.
In fiction
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- In Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, it is used for the conditioning of children into the novel's fictional future culture. In the novel, sleep-learning is supposed to have been discovered after a Polish-speaking boy named Reuben Rabinovitch was able to recite an entire radio broadcast in English after listening to it in his sleep. The boy was unable to comprehend what he had heard via hypnopædia, but it was soon realized that hypnopædia could be used to effectively make suggestions about morality.
- In Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, it is used to brainwash the main character Alex to be a respectful person and so bring him back to society after 2 years in prison.
- In the BBC2 sitcom Red Dwarf, Arnold Rimmer used sleep-learning tapes such as Learn Esperanto While You Sleep and Learn Quantum Theory While You Sleep, to the dismay of his bunkmate Dave Lister. When Rimmer told Lister that they both received the same benefit, Lister replied that was true; neither of them got any sleep.
- In the computer game Outpost 2 the amount of time required to train workers into scientists can be reduced through a research topic called hypnopædia, which causes them to learn in their sleep.
- In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer orders hypnopædia tapes which are supposed to induce weight loss. However, the mail-order company sends him vocabulary builder tapes instead, and Homer gets fatter and fatter while his vocabulary increases.
- In the episode of Dexter's Laboratory, The Big Cheese, Dexter hooks himself up to a gramophone that repeats his lesson for the class test the next morning. The gramophone gets stuck at the phrase omelette du fromage, and Dexter finds out the next morning that it is all he is capable of saying.
- In one short on Homestar Runner Coach Z attempts to overcome his speech impediment with the word "job" (which he pronounces as "jorb"). After unsuccessfully trying several methods, Strong Sad gives him a tape of him repeating the word job thousands of times, "from when (he) was practicing the dictionary". Coach Z takes it home and listens to it while he sleeps, and the next day is able to pronounce "job" correctly, but forgets Homestar's name.
- The twins Hank and Dean Venture, of the the animated television program The Venture Bros., are home-schooled through the use of hypnopædic beds.
- In an episode of Friends, Chandler tries to quit smoking with the help of hypnopædia. However, the tape includes the words "You are a strong and confident woman", rendering Chandler more feminine in his actions for the remainder of the episode.
- In Fahrenheit 451, Faber tells Montag, "So if you like, I'll read you to sleep nights. They say you retain knowledge even when you're sleeping..." He then read The Book of Job to Montag.
See also
References
- Leshan, L. (1942). The breaking of a habit by suggestion during sleep. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 37, 406-408.
- Fox, B.H., & Robbin, J.S. (1952). The retention of material presented during sleep. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 43, 75-79.
- Emmons W. H., Simon C. W. The non-recall of material presented during sleep. Am J Psychol. 1956 Mar;69(1):76-81.