“Usually, I try to study right up until the test because it might trigger some memory that makes me remember, ‘Oh yeah, I just read that,’” McCullagh said.

Although McCullagh’s method is effective, a study led by an MSU psychology professor on the correlation between sleep and false memories shows students such as McCullagh could benefit more from putting down the books and falling asleep.

Kimberly Fenn, an assistant professor of psychology at MSU and one of the study’s five co-authors, said the team’s research shows individuals who sleep after studying will have fewer problems with false memories, or the belief a person experienced something when it didn’t actually occur, than those who don’t sleep.

The other four co-authors of the study, “Reduced False Memory After Sleep,” include David Gallo, Daniel Margoliash and Howard Nusbaum of the University of Chicago and Henry Roediger III of Washington University in St. Louis. The study was published on the journal Learning and Memory’s Web site on Aug. 25.

“Students take long multiple choice exams and the questions are written so that they’re a little tricky,” Fenn said.

“This work suggests that you may be better at being able to really tease apart those close foils after sleep than after a period of wakefulness.”

Fenn began the study as a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Chicago before she joined MSU’s Department of Psychology in 2008.

In each of three separate experiments, one group of participants either heard or saw a list of words at 10 p.m. before they left the location to go to sleep. Twelve hours later, the group returned to answer questions about the words they remembered appearing on the list.

A second group reviewed the words at 10 a.m. and returned at 10 p.m. for a test. Fenn said the group who slept prior to a testing chose fewer incorrect words than their counterparts.

“There was no difference in the number of correct items selected, but they showed significant lower false memories,” Fenn said.

Researchers remain unsure how sleep reduces an individual’s false memories, Fenn said.

Roediger, who helped design the study, said the study’s importance lies in its ability to further research in the field.

“The importance of the study is that they just helped to add to the number of studies that have shown sleep has beneficial affects on learning and memory,” Roediger said.