The Benefit of Naps on Cognitive, Emotional and Motor Learning in Preschoolers

描述(申请人提供)：睡眠保护和增强年轻人的记忆力。具体地说，一系列任务的性能变化在有睡眠的时间间隔之后比在清醒时间间隔内的变化更大。睡眠还能增强后续记忆的编码。对于年轻人来说，午睡就足以获得这些表现上的好处。与成年人不同，午睡对小孩子来说是例行公事。孩子们摆脱这种双相睡眠模式的年龄通常会受到父母和学校时间表的影响。午睡是否对幼儿的学习和表现有特别的好处还不得而知。本研究的目的是以午睡为模型，研究睡眠对幼儿(3-5岁)学习记忆功能的影响。通过探索午睡或醒来前后的回忆，最重要的假设是，午睡有利于现有的记忆和随后的学习。在学龄前课堂上，孩子们将在午睡之前(具体目标1)或之后(具体目标2)接受关于陈述性、情绪性或程序性学习任务的培训。在两种情况下，孩子们要么 在此间隔期间进行午睡升级或唤醒升级。随后，将在当天和第二天对业绩进行重新评估。研究的具体假设是：a)午睡有利于大多数睡前学习的任务的表现；b)睡眠后学习的任务的表现优于醒来后学习的任务的表现；c)即使在整夜睡眠后，当睡眠压力和情绪的差异相等时，睡眠的好处仍然存在。这项工作的创新之处在于它提出了一个公认的理论结构的新应用。此外，预计这些成果将把目前学龄前儿童午睡的松懈做法转变为促进午睡的做法，并更好地考虑午睡机会的长短。这一转变的意义可以从有关课堂午睡机会的新政策和学龄前儿童的儿科午睡指南中看到。其理论意义在于，这些成果将推动教育科学的一个全新研究维度(睡眠是促进学习的新目标)，并推动对依赖睡眠的认知和神经过程的影响和基础的进一步发展研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sleep protects and enhances memory in young adults. Specifically, performance changes on a range of tasks are greater following an interval with sleep relative to changes over an interval spent awake. Sleep also enhances encoding of subsequent memories. In young adults, a mid-day nap is sufficient for gaining these performance benefits. Unlike adults, mid-day naps are routine for young children. The age at which children wean from this biphasic sleep pattern is often influenced by parent and school schedules. Whether naps confer a particular benefit to learning and performance of young children is unknown. The research objective of this proposal is to characterize the function of sleep on learning and memory in young children (3-5 yrs) using naps as a model. By probing recall prior to and following mid-day nap or wake intervals, the overarching hypothesis is that mid-day naps benefit existing memories and subsequent learning. In the preschool classroom, children will be trained on a declarative, emotional, or procedural learning task before (Specific Aim 1) or after (Specific Aim 2) a mid-day nap opportunity. In two conditions, children will either be nap-promoted or wake-promoted during this interval. Subsequently, performance will be reassessed that day as well as the following day. The specific hypotheses examined are: a) mid-day naps benefit performance on most tasks learned prior to sleep; b) performance on tasks learned after sleep is superior to performance for tasks learned after wake, and; c) the benefit of sleep remains even after overnight sleep, when differences in sleep pressure and mood are equated. This work is innovative in that it presents a novel application of an accepted theoretical construct. Moreover, these results are expected to shift the current lax practices regarding naps in preschools to a practice of nap-promotion and better regard for the length of the nap opportunity. The translational significance may be seen in new policies regarding in-class nap opportunities and pediatric nap guidelines for preschool children. The theoretical significance is that these outcomes will drive an entirely new research dimension for educational sciences (sleep as a novel target to enhance learning) and spur further developmental studies on the influence and underpinnings of sleep-dependent cognitive and neural processes.