Very proud of this latest paper, which shows that reading two unrelated words in a meaningful sentence will push these words closer in semantic space—an effect observed 5min, 20min, and 12 hrs after initial exposure.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Finally, a big thank you to my co-authors who made this research possible (8/8): Eva Kimel @vanessakeller.bsky.social Eloise Ward @sacairney.bsky.social @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social @jennirodd.bsky.social @mggaskell.bsky.social

Overall, these findings suggest a bounded role of sleep in consolidating linguistic-related, episodic memories. Sleep-maintained WMP over the longer term may therefore be underpinned by both passive and active elements of sleep (7/8).

Our EEG results revealed a significant increase in sleep spindle activity following memory vs. control cues, consistent with prior TMR work and suggesting memory reprocessing during sleep (6/8).

At test, WMP was indexed via word association. Overall, primed homonyms elicited more responses consistent with the subordinate meaning than unprimed homonyms (WMP), but within the primed condition, TMR did not increase subordinate responses relative to the No TMR condition (5/8).

At exposure, participants (n = 58) were primed to the subordinate meaning of several homonyms via sentences which were associated with an auditory cue. Ppts then took a 2-hr nap; during NREM sleep, half of the memory cues from exposure were replayed, along with unexposed control cues (4/8).

In this study (specifically, Experiment 2), we investigated the causal role of sleep on WMP by promoting specific linguistic-related memories for consolidation (during sleep) via TMR (3/8).

A homonym’s subordinate meaning (bark: dog noise vs. tree covering) is temporarily more accessible after it is encountered: word-meaning priming (WMP). Over 12 and 24 hrs, WMP is maintained by sleep vs. wake, suggesting a sleep consolidation effect on episodic memories of previous discourse (2/8).

Very happy to share our new preprint revealing no evidence for a targeted memory reactivation (TMR) effect on word-meaning priming (1/8): osf.io/preprints/ps...