In addition to benefiting the retention of word pair associates, sleep has been demonstrated to facilitate novel word learning (e.g., Dumay & Gaskell, 2007). This systematic review highlights the potential for sleep to be used to improve second-language learning in healthy adults, and overall provides further insight into methods to facilitate language development. Overall, the results of this meta-analysis indicate that sleep generally benefits novel word acquisition and consolidation compared with wakefulness across differing retrieval domains. Effect sizes differed across the separate domain-specific meta-analyses, with moderate effects for recall ( g = 0.57) and recognition memory ( g = 0.52), and a small effect for tasks which measured lexical integration ( g = 0.39). The results from the omnibus meta-analysis indicated that sleep was beneficial for novel word learning compared with wakefulness ( g = 0.50). Twenty-five unique studies met the inclusion criteria for the review, and 42 separate outcome measures were synthesized in the meta-analysis ( k = 29 separate between-group comparisons, n = 1,396 participants).

This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to investigate the effect of sleep on novel word learning in adults, and explore whether these effects differed by retrieval domain (i.e., recall, recognition, and tests of lexical integration). There is increasing evidence to indicate that sleep plays a role in language acquisition and consolidation however, there has been substantial variability in methodological approaches used to examine this phenomenon.

Sleepyhead novel