Rip Van Winkle Effect

Rip Van Winkle Effect

Rip Van Winkle is the legendary character who went to sleep as a youth and awakened as an old man. If he had significant dreams, they are not related in the story. Rather, the interesting phase of the narrative is when Van Winkle walks back to his village and interacts in awkward and entertaining ways with the village residents.

The Rip Van Winkle effect refers to the effects of too much sleep and is, of course, named after the mythical character. Sleep researchers have found that too much sleep is almost as detrimental as too little sleep. In several experiments it has been demonstrated that subjects who sleep even an hour or two longer than normal perform significantly worse on vigilance tasks. Extra sleep also increases the amount of Stage 2 and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which are the phases marked by the most vivid dreams.