Why did both groups have two normal nights of sleep before the test?
A small study asked two groups of students to learn a list of word pairs in the evening. One group slept normally that night. The other stayed awake all night. Both groups then had two normal nights of sleep, and three days after learning, both were tested. The group that had slept on the first night recalled noticeably more pairs. The researchers concluded that sleep soon after learning plays a special role in fixing new memories, rather than sleep in general being good for recall. They cautioned that the sample was small and made up entirely of young adults, so the result should be treated as a lead for larger studies rather than as a rule.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. To make the difference between groups depend on the first night, not on later sleep loss
- Step 1: A fair comparison needs the groups to differ in one way only. Step 2. Giving both groups later sleep means that the first night is the remaining difference. Answer: to isolate the effect of the first night. Why not the others: The other purposes are not described in the passage.
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