RUI: The Role of Sleep in Infant Motor Problem Solving

为了身体和情绪的健康，婴儿需要频繁的休息或睡眠。睡眠在学习和记忆中也起着非常重要的作用。睡眠帮助婴儿将新学到的信息巩固在他们的记忆中，这个过程被称为巩固。这个项目的目标是研究睡眠在运动学习中的作用--获得一种涉及身体运动协调的新技能。这些结果将为婴儿的睡眠质量和时间安排如何影响他们处理新信息的能力和巩固新的运动问题解决能力提供重要的见解。拟议的工作架起了三个研究领域的桥梁：认知发展、运动发展和睡眠。刚开始独立坐着的婴儿将学会解决一项新颖的伸手任务。在这项任务之后，婴儿将经历一段延迟，其中包括加强运动训练，在此之后，一些婴儿将打盹，另一些婴儿则不会。将评估午睡的影响。通过计算机视觉技术记录婴儿睡眠特征的家庭视频婴儿监测系统将提供“婴儿床上的视频”，并将被用来评估睡眠质量的个体差异，以及它们与解决新的运动问题的关系。在训练前和训练后的晚上测量睡眠，可以调查白天和晚上睡眠对婴儿期学习的独特贡献。一组早产儿的对照组将允许调查睡眠障碍、注意力集中能力下降和运动迟缓的风险婴儿的睡眠和学习之间的关系是否受到影响。拟议的研究最终应该提供指导方针，以平衡丰富的学习经验，对高危人群的干预，以及促进休息和调节的保护环境。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Infants need frequent periods of rest or sleep for their physical and emotional well-being. Sleep also plays a very important role in learning and memory. Sleep helps babies to solidify newly learned information in their memories, a process known as consolidation. The goal of this project is to study the role of sleep in motor learning — acquiring a new skill involving physical coordination of movement. The results will provide important insights into how the quality and timing of infants’ sleep influences their ability to process new information and consolidate new motor problem-solving abilities.The proposed work bridges three areas of research: cognitive development, motor development, and sleep. Infants who have just begun to sit independently will learn to solve a novel reaching task. Following the task, infants will experience a delay that includes an enhanced motor training after which some will nap and others will not. The impact of napping will be assessed. A home video baby monitoring system that documents characteristics of infants’ sleep via computer-vision technology will provide “video from the crib” and will be employed to assess individual differences in quality of sleep and how they relate to solving the novel motor problem. Measuring sleep prior to training and the following night will permit investigation of the unique contributions of day and night sleep to learning in infancy. A comparison group of infants born pre-term will allow for the investigation into whether the relation between sleep and learning is compromised in infants at risk for sleep disorders, for reduced capacity for focused attention, and for motor delay. The proposed research should ultimately provide guidelines for balancing enriched learning experiences, interventions for at-risk populations, and a protective environment that promotes rest and regulation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.