Sleep Deprivation Might Lead to Formation of False Memories

Researchers highlight a strong association between lack of sleep and increased risk of forming false memories.

Not sleeping well and enough is known to have serious impact on the health of a person. The impact can be both long term and short term. The new study, led by a psychological scientist at the University of California, states that sleep deprivation may lead to formation of false memories.

In the study, psychological scientist Steven J. Frenda showed how less than eight hours of sleep disrupts cognitive functioning. After conducting preliminary study, researchers suggest that getting 5 hours of sleep or less was linked with formation of false memories.

Frenda explains, "I was surprised to find that there were so few empirical studies connecting sleep deprivation with memory distortion in an eyewitness context. The studies that do exist look mostly at sleep deprived people's ability to accurately remember lists of words-not real people, places and events."

The study included 104 college-age participants who were randomly assigned to one of four groups. Among the four, two were shown a series of photos depicting a crime committed as soon as they arrived to the lab, one group was then allowed to sleep, while the other group stayed awake all night in the lab. The other two groups followed the same procedure in reverse order - they either slept or stayed awake all night and then viewed the crime photos in the morning.

In the second set of the experiment, the participants read narratives that had statements contradicting what the photograph actually depicted.

The researchers noticed that the sleep-deprived people for all parts of the experiments (viewing photo, reading description, taking memory test after staying awake all night) and were more likely to report false details from text description as having been present in the crime photograph.

"Recent studies are suggesting that people are getting fewer hours of sleep on average, and chronic sleep deprivation is on the rise," says Frenda. "Our findings have implications for the reliability of eyewitnesses who may have experienced long periods of restricted or deprived sleep."

The finding was documented in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science.