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Naps promote flexible memory retrieval in 12‐month‐old infants
Author(s) -
Konrad Carolin,
Seehagen Sabine,
Schneider Silvia,
Herbert Jane S.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.21431
Subject(s) - nap , flexibility (engineering) , session (web analytics) , psychology , imitation , sleep (system call) , schedule , audiology , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , computer science , social psychology , medicine , statistics , mathematics , world wide web , operating system
Flexibility in applying existing knowledge to similar cues is a corner stone of memory development in infants. Here, we examine the effect of sleep on the flexibility of memory retrieval using a deferred imitation paradigm. Forty‐eight 12‐month‐old infants were randomly assigned to either a nap or a no‐nap demonstration condition (scheduled around their natural daytime sleep schedule) or to a baseline control condition. In the demonstration conditions, infants watched an experimenter perform three target actions on a hand puppet. Immediately afterwards, infants were allowed to practice the target actions three times. In a test session 4‐hr later, infants were given the opportunity to reproduce the actions with a novel hand puppet differing in color from the puppet used during the demonstration session. Only infants in the nap‐condition performed significantly more target actions than infants in the baseline control condition. Furthermore, they were faster to carry out the first target action than infants in the no‐nap condition. We conclude that sleep had a facilitative effect on infants’ flexibility of memory retrieval.