Transitive inference is a measure of relational learning that has been shown to improve across sleep. Here, we examine this phenomenon further by studying the impact of encoding strength and joint rank. In experiment 1, participants learned adjacent premise pairs and were then tested on inferential problems derived from those pairs. In line with prior work, we found improved transitive inference performance after retention across a night of sleep compared with wake alone. Experiment 2 extended these findings using a within-subject design and found superior transitive inference performance on a hierarchy, consolidated across 27 h including sleep compared with just 3 h of wake. In both experiments, consolidation-related improvement was enhanced when presleep learning (i.e., encoding strength) was stronger. We also explored the interaction of these effects with the joint rank effect, in which items were scored according to their rank in the hierarchy, with more dominant item pairs having the lowest scores. Interestingly, the consolidation-related benefit was greatest for more dominant inference pairs (i.e., those with low joint rank scores). Overall, our findings provide further support for the improvement of transitive inference across a consolidation period that includes sleep. We additionally show that encoding strength and joint rank strongly modulate this effect.

中文翻译：

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与睡眠相关的传递推理益处通过编码强度和联合等级进行调节

传递推理是关系学习的一种衡量标准，已被证明可以在整个睡眠过程中得到改善。在这里，我们通过研究编码强度和联合排名的影响来进一步研究这种现象。在实验 1 中，参与者学习了相邻的前提对，然后对从这些前提对导出的推理问题进行测试。与之前的工作一致，我们发现与单独醒来相比，在整个晚上的睡眠中保持记忆后的传递推理性能有所提高。实验 2 使用受试者内设计扩展了这些发现，并发现在层次结构上具有优异的传递推理性能，在包括睡眠在内的 27 小时内进行巩固，而仅在清醒 3 小时内进行巩固。在这两个实验中，当睡前学习（即编码强度）更强时，巩固相关的改善就会增强。我们还探讨了这些效应与联合排名效应的相互作用，其中项目根据其在层次结构中的排名进行评分，更占主导地位的项目对得分最低。有趣的是，对于更占主导地位的推理对（即那些联合排名分数较低的推理对）来说，与整合相关的好处是最大的。总体而言，我们的研究结果为包括睡眠在内的巩固期的传递推理的改进提供了进一步的支持。我们还表明，编码强度和联合等级强烈调节这种效应。