MODERN SLEEP-LEARNING: Page 108

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. The last point—easy to remember mental pictures —raises the question: could dreams be supplying this aspect of remembering for the material heard during sleep? Sleep-learning advocates explain that sleep-tapes achieve involuntary duplication or repetition of a desired