How did children's task performance change after sleep versus time awake?

Details

Sleep is an active state important for memory consolidation. Previous research has found that it enhances explicit memories in adults and children, but children do not always show the sleep-related improvements in implicit learning seen in adults. Because most research on sleep-dependent memory consolidation focuses on adults, this study examined sleep-related effects on two tasks in children.

Thirty-three typically developing children aged 6–12 took part, and their sleep was monitored using actigraphy. Researchers assessed sleep-dependent memory consolidation with a novel non-word learning task and the Tower of Hanoi cognitive puzzle, which involves discovering an underlying rule to help complete it. Children were trained on both tasks and retested after approximately equal retention intervals involving sleep and wakefulness.

After sleep, performance improved significantly by 14% on the non-word task and 25% on the Tower of Hanoi task; scores did not change significantly after the wake interval. Sleep quality and duration were not related to task performance.

The researchers suggested that the Tower of Hanoi improvement might reflect consolidation of explicit aspects of the task, such as learning a rule or remembering previous sequences. They proposed that sleep is necessary for the consolidation of explicit memory in children. They also noted that if this experimentally observed sleep-related learning enhancement generalizes to everyday life, sleep plays a vital role in children's educational attainment.