Children sleep more than adults. Until now, however, little has been known about the relationship between sleep and child development in the first year of life. Researchers from the University of Sheffield and the Ruhr University (Germany) found that infant sleep plays an extremely important role in the development of his declarative memory, i.e. skills in remembering facts, events and acquired knowledge.
Scientists decided to find out whether sleep helps the baby to better remember the acquired skills acquired in the learning process. The study involved 216 healthy children aged 6 to 12 months.
Babies were shown how to remove a mitten from a puppet. After that, the children had to reproduce this action after 4 and 24 hours.
Children were divided into 2 groups - the first group did not sleep before the task, and the second slept for about 30 minutes before the action was played.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) showed that only children who were put to sleep before the task remembered the new information.
After 24 hours, the group of children who slept also showed better memory results.
Researcher Dr Jane Herbert of the Department of Psychology at the University of Sheffield said: "These results are valuable for both parents and educators as they show that the best time to remember information is before bedtime." Scientists have found that sleep of less than 30 minutes is not sufficient for proper consolidation of knowledge.
For sound sleep before going to bed, do these exercises:
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