Table 2.

Memory Measures for Neutral and Emotional Texts

		Early retention interval			Late retention interval
		Sleep mean ± SEM	Wake mean ± SEM	F(1,21)	Sleep mean ± SEM	Wake mean ± SEM	F(1,21)
Memory for neutral texts
Learning	Recall of content words	30.63 ± 2.50	33.33 ± 3.96	0.35	35.26 ± 1.91	32.63 ± 3.10	0.55
Retrieval	Recall of content words	27.90 ± 3.04	29.55 ± 3.37	0.13	27.91 ± 1.93	23.28 ± 2.81	1.90
Retention	Percent of learning	89.64 ± 4.30	89.68 ± 4.14	0.00	79.20 ± 3.85	73.36 ± 6.17	0.67
Memory for emotional texts
Learning	Recall of content words	50.38 ± 3.21	50.03 ± 4.16	0.01	49.39 ± 2.38	49.85 ± 3.86	0.01
Retrieval	Recall of content words	44.75 ± 3.30	40.21 ± 3.79	0.83	46.13 ± 2.50	36.67 ± 3.87	4.37*
Retention	Percent of learning	89.34 ± 4.07	80.15 ± 2.83	3.31	93.27 ± 1.89	72.30 ± 2.59	43.82**

Memory for neutral and emotional texts assessed at acquisition before and at retrieval testing after retention periods covering the early and late night, filled either with sleep or wakefulness. Recall at learning and at retrieval testing: Text content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) correctly recalled, relative to text length (averaging 94.5 content words for emotional texts and 95.0 for neutral texts). Retention: Percentage of content words correctly recalled at retrieval testing with recall performance at learning set to 100%. 

^** P < 0.001, *P < 0.05.