A study appears to find evidence of "sleep learning"—the ability to perceive and retain material played on an audio recording while a person sleeps, unaware of the recording

What would you want to know about this research before deciding to record this chapter and play it by your bedside all night instead of studying it in the usual way?

What will be an ideal response?

Was there a control group that listened to, say, a musical selection or white noise? How complicated was the material that was allegedly learned: a few key words, whole sentences, and a whole lecture by Professor Arbuckle? Were the results large enough to have any practical applications? How did the researchers determine that the participants really were asleep? (When brain-wave measures are used to verify that volunteers are actually sleeping, no "sleep learning" takes place.)