How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting

Effortless learning during sleep is everybody’s dream. Several studies found that presenting odor cues during learning and selectively during slow wave sleep increases learning success. The current study extends previous research in three aspects to test for optimization and practical applicability of this cueing effect: We (1) performed a field study of vocabulary-learning in a regular school setting, (2) stimulated with odor cues during the whole night without sleep monitoring, and (3) applied the odor additionally as retrieval cue in a subsequent test. We found an odor cueing effect with comparable effect sizes (d between 0.6 and 1.2) as studies with sleep monitoring and selective cueing. Further, we observed some (non-significant) indication for a further performance benefit with additional cueing during the recall test. Our results replicate previous findings and provide important extensions: First, the odor effect also works outside the lab. Second, continuous cueing at night produces similar effect sizes as a study with selective cueing in specific sleep stages. Whether odor cueing during memory recall further increases memory performance hast to be shown in future studies. Overall, our results extend the knowledge on odor cueing effects and provide a realistic practical perspective on it.