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13/01/2015

Naps Help A Baby's Development

A new study from the University of Sheffield has revealed that naps can help improve a baby's development.

The research, conducted by Dr Jane Herbet, found that daytime naps of 30 minutes or more can help an infant's memory to develop, as well as retain new behaviours they have learned.

The first-of-its-kind study involved researchers from the University of Sheffield and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and it was discovered that the well-known saying, 'sleeping like a baby', is actually vital in declarative memory consolidation; such as retaining facts, events and knowledge.

Focusing on 216 healthy infants, aged between six and 12 months, the research tested their ability to recall newly-learned skills. The children were shown how to remove and manipulate a mitten from a hand puppet, and were then given the chance to copy these actions after a delay of four hours, and then 24 hours. The infants were then compared between those who had not taken a nap after learning, and those who napped for at least half an hour with four hours of learning.

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It was found that only the infants who had napped after the learning activity remembered the target actions, while those who had not slept showed no evidence of remembering the new information and behaviour.

After a 24-hour delay in repeating the learning action, children in the napping group again showed significantly better recall, compared to the youngsters who had no nap.

Commenting on the findings, researcher Dr Herbert, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Psychology, said: "These findings are particularly interesting to both parents and educationalists because they suggest that the optimal time for infants to learn new information is just before they have a sleep.

"Until now people have presumed that the best time for infants to learn is when they are wide-awake, rather than when they are starting to feel tired, but our results show that activities occurring just before infants have a nap can be particularly valuable and well-remembered."

She continued: "Parents receive lots of advice about what they should and shouldn't do with their baby's sleep schedule. This study however examined learning opportunities around naturally occurring naps and shows just how valuable activities like reading books with young children just before they go down to sleep can be."

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

(JP/CD)

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"A new study from the University of Sheffield has revealed that naps can help improve a baby's development."