Is it possible to memorize things in a subconscious manner, for example, hearing a certain tape while sleeping, or in any other way?

thanks

As far as I know, no.

It only works in the movies unfortunately. There was a wave of such self help recordings sold in the '50s where this was the latest fad in teaching. Some of them were quite fun, like losing weight while sleeping because of the alleged suggestive powers of the subconscious, even over your body's ability to burn excess fat.

But the trend went away as nobody were able to show any real actual results. You sadly need to be awake and concentrating in order to learn. Quite depressing really. I would have liked to be able to wake up with an improved Spanish vocabulary or some other increased ability like self confidence.

Some people still claim that it works. It is basically a faith type of thing. They claim they feel more knowledgeable yet no one scores any higher on actual tests. If they had done so we would all have been put to bed with ear phones in out school days.

But as it turns out, not even "Linguaphone" type courses where you listen to tapes while awake work very well unless you put other things aside and follow it with some degree of alertness.

EDIT: P.S: If you do try it anyway, chances are that you will really learn something from the process of preparing and reading the information onto the tape and then checking it. Learning from a varied combination of reading, writing, listening and speaking is a very good way of studying.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't use it as a presentation for a magic routine!

thanks, I guess I just like deluding myself, expecting some miracle findings - I really don't know what brings me to do it over and over again - maybe I'm just too bored or lazy or both .

Tis a pity, isn't it? This is reminiscent of the James McConell memory transfer studies of the 60's and 70's. Eventually they were debunked, but McConnel had a lot of scientists believing that you could teach a simple behavior to a flat worm, grind it up, feed it to another flat worm, and the second worm now possesed the knowledge. He had everyone believing that one day we could take a pill and suddenly have new information in our memory banks. Maybe someday this will become possible, but it's a long way off.

I actually worked (for two years) at the research facility at the University of Michigan where McConnell did his research. (Not is his lab.) It was a big disappointment and surprise when other labs began to report that his results could not be duplicated.

Dennis Loomis