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The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children

Daytime napping contributes to retention of new word learning in children. Importantly, children transition out of regular napping between ages 3–5 years, and the impact of this transition on memory is unclear. Here, we examined the performance of both non-habitually napping children (nap 0–3 days p...

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Autores principales: Esterline, Katherine, Gómez, Rebecca L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8533952/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34679385
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101320
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author Esterline, Katherine
Gómez, Rebecca L.
author_facet Esterline, Katherine
Gómez, Rebecca L.
author_sort Esterline, Katherine
collection PubMed
description Daytime napping contributes to retention of new word learning in children. Importantly, children transition out of regular napping between ages 3–5 years, and the impact of this transition on memory is unclear. Here, we examined the performance of both non-habitually napping children (nap 0–3 days per week, n = 28) and habitually napping children (nap 4–7 days per week, n = 30) on a word learning task after a delay including either sleep or wakefulness. Children ages 3.5–4.5 years old experienced a brief exposure to two novel labels and their referents during training, a scenario that replicates learning experiences children encounter every day. After a 4-h delay, children were tested on the object-label associations. Using mixed effects logistic regression, we compared retention performance. Non-habitual nappers and habitual nappers displayed a different pattern of retention such that non-habitually napping children did equally well on a test of retention regardless of whether they napped or stayed awake during the delay. In contrast, habitually napping children needed a nap after learning to retain the novel object-label associations 4 h later. As a group, habitual nappers who remained awake after learning performed no better than chance on the retention test. As children transition out of naps, they may be less susceptible to interference and are better able to retain newly learned words across a delay including wakefulness.
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spelling pubmed-85339522021-10-23 The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children Esterline, Katherine Gómez, Rebecca L. Brain Sci Article Daytime napping contributes to retention of new word learning in children. Importantly, children transition out of regular napping between ages 3–5 years, and the impact of this transition on memory is unclear. Here, we examined the performance of both non-habitually napping children (nap 0–3 days per week, n = 28) and habitually napping children (nap 4–7 days per week, n = 30) on a word learning task after a delay including either sleep or wakefulness. Children ages 3.5–4.5 years old experienced a brief exposure to two novel labels and their referents during training, a scenario that replicates learning experiences children encounter every day. After a 4-h delay, children were tested on the object-label associations. Using mixed effects logistic regression, we compared retention performance. Non-habitual nappers and habitual nappers displayed a different pattern of retention such that non-habitually napping children did equally well on a test of retention regardless of whether they napped or stayed awake during the delay. In contrast, habitually napping children needed a nap after learning to retain the novel object-label associations 4 h later. As a group, habitual nappers who remained awake after learning performed no better than chance on the retention test. As children transition out of naps, they may be less susceptible to interference and are better able to retain newly learned words across a delay including wakefulness. MDPI 2021-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8533952/ /pubmed/34679385 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101320 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Esterline, Katherine
Gómez, Rebecca L.
The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children
title The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children
title_full The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children
title_fullStr The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children
title_full_unstemmed The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children
title_short The Role of Sleep in Retention of New Words in Habitually and Non-Habitually Napping Children
title_sort role of sleep in retention of new words in habitually and non-habitually napping children
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8533952/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34679385
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101320
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