The roles of item exposure and visualization success in the consolidation of memories across wake and sleep

Memory consolidation during sleep does not benefit all memories equally. Initial encoding strength appears to play a role in governing where sleep effects are seen, but it is unclear whether sleep preferentially consolidates weaker or stronger memories. We manipulated encoding strength along two dimensions—the number of item presentations, and success at visualizing each item, in a sample of 82 participants. Sleep benefited memory of successfully visualized items only. Within these, the sleep–wake difference was largest for more weakly encoded information. These results suggest that the benefit of sleep on memory is seen most clearly for items that are encoded to a lower initial strength.