Trial reportSleep2017
The Effects of an Afternoon Nap on Episodic Memory in Young and Older Adults.
Trial report in Sleep, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Daytime Napping and Cognitive Health in Older Adults: A Systematic Review.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Benefits and risks of napping in older adults: A systematic review.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of individual differences in naturalistic sleep quality and episodic memory performance in young and older adults.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Afternoon naps can improve prospective memory performance by strengthening cue monitoring.Psychological research · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Offline consolidation mechanisms of the retrieval practice effect: an analysis based on EEG signal characteristics.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- Naps, night-time sleep and cognitive function among middle-aged and older people in China.PloS one · 2025Article
- To-be-forgotten information shows more relative forgetting over time than to-be-remembered information.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Article
- Heterogeneity in longitudinal trajectories of cognitive performance among middle-aged and older individuals with hypertension: Growth mixture modeling across an 8-year cohort study.Hypertension research : official journal of the Japanese Society of Hypertension · 2022Article
- Association Between Nap Duration and Cognitive Functions Among Saudi Older Adults.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- Does Sleep Selectively Strengthen Certain Memories Over Others Based on Emotion and Perceived Future Relevance?Nature and science of sleep · 2021Review
- Relationship between afternoon napping and cognitive function in the ageing Chinese population.General psychiatry · 2021Article
- Role of Napping for Learning across the Lifespan.Current sleep medicine reports · 2020Article
- Memory quality modulates the effect of aging on memory consolidation during sleep: Reduced maintenance but intact gain.NeuroImage · 2020Article
- Targeted memory reactivation during sleep boosts intentional forgetting of spatial locations.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Objective napping, cognitive decline, and risk of cognitive impairment in older men.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2019Article
- Rapid eye movement sleep mediates age-related decline in prospective memory consolidation.Sleep · 2019Article
- Dynamic Contributions of Slow Wave Sleep and REM Sleep to Cognitive Longevity.Current sleep medicine reports · 2018Article
- Do Older Adults Need Sleep? A Review of Neuroimaging, Sleep, and Aging Studies.Current sleep medicine reports · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Study Objectives: In young adults, napping is hypothesized to benefit episodic memory retention (eg, via consolidation). Whether this relationship is present in older adults has not been adequately tested but is an important question because older adults display marked changes in sleep and memory. Design: Between-subjects design. Setting: Sleep laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine. Participants: Fifty healthy young adults (18-29) and 45 community-dwelling older adults (58-83). Intervention: Participants were randomly assigned to a 90-minute nap opportunity or an equal interval of quiet wakefulness. Measurements and Results: Participants underwent an item-wise directed forgetting learning procedure in which they studied words that were individually followed by the instruction to "remember" or "forget." Following a 90-minute retention interval filled with quiet wakefulness or a nap opportunity, they were asked to free recall and recognize those words. Young adults retained significantly more words following a nap interval than a quiet wakefulness interval on both free recall and recognition tests. There was modest evidence for greater nap-related retention of "remember" items relative to "forget" items for free recall but not recognition. Older adults' memory retention did not differ across nap and quiet wakefulness conditions, although they demonstrated greater fragmentation, lower N3, and lower rapid eye movement duration than the young adults. Conclusions: In young adults, an afternoon nap benefits episodic memory retention, but such benefits decrease with advancing age.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.