PMID: 9526148Apr 4, 1998Paper

Inhalation of 30% nitrous oxide impairs people's learning without impairing people's judgments of what will be remembered

Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology
John DunloskyD S Ramsay

Abstract

Many hypotheses have been proposed to account for the effects of nitrous oxide on memory, with one emerging possibility being that it has a global effect on memory-related functioning. This possibility was explored by examining the effects of nitrous oxide on memory performance and on the accuracy of people's judgments about their memory performance. Participants inhaled 30% nitrous oxide or a placebo gas while items were studied and while judgments were made about the likelihood of recall for each item. Next, all participants inhaled the placebo during paired-associate recall. Although administration of nitrous oxide during study impaired recall, it did not affect the predictive accuracy of the metacognitive judgments. These results provide pharmacological evidence for a distinction between memory and metamemory.

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