Sleep enhances category learning

Abstract

The ability to categorize objects and events in the world around us is a fundamental and critical aspect of human learning. We trained healthy adults on a probabilistic category-learning task in two different training modes. The aim of this study was to see whether either form of probabilistic category learning (feedback or observational) undergoes subsequent enhancement during sleep. Our results suggest that after training, a good night of sleep can lead to improved performance the following day on such tasks.