Sleep researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst today offer the first research results showing that classroom naps support learning in preschool children by enhancing memory. Children who napped performed significantly better on a visual-spatial task in the afternoon after a nap and the next day than those who did not nap. Research psychologist Rebecca Spencer, with students Kasey Duclos and Laura Kurdziel, say their results suggest naps are critical for memory consolidation¹ and early learning, based on their study of more than 40 preschool children. "Essentially² we are the first to report evidence that naps are important for preschool children," Spencer says. "Our study shows that naps help the kids better remember what they are learning in preschool." Results appear in the current issue of Proceedings³ of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

With an increase in publicly funded preschools, parents and administrators⁴ have questioned the usefulness of the naps. "There is increased public funding for preschools and increased enrollments in preschools due to a surge of research showing the long-term health and educational benefits of early education. But there was no research on napping so they were a target for elimination⁵ in order to make more time for more learning. We offer scientific evidence that the midday naps for preschoolers support the academic goals of early education."

 

For this study, Spencer and colleagues recruited 40 children from six preschools across western Massachusetts. The researchers taught children a visual-spatial task similar to the game "Memory" in the mornings. In this game, children see a grid⁶ of pictures and have to remember where different pictures are located. Each child participated in two conditions.

 

In one condition, the children were encouraged to nap during their regular classroom nap opportunity. Naps lasted an average of 77 minutes as recorded by observers in the classroom. In the second condition, children were kept awake for the same amount of time. Memory for the game was tested after the nap and wake conditions and again the following day to see whether nighttime sleep affected⁷ performance.

 

Children forgot significantly more item locations on the memory test when they had not taken a nap (65 percent accuracy), compared to when they did nap (75 percent accuracy). Thus following a nap, children recalled 10 percent more of the test locations than when they had been kept awake.

 

"While the children performed about the same immediately after learning in both the nap and wake conditions, the children performed significantly better when they napped both in the afternoon and the next day," the authors summarize. "That means that when they miss a nap, the child cannot recover this benefit of sleep with their overnight sleep. It seems that there is an additional benefit of having the sleep occur in close proximity⁸ to the learning."

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