Poster #2 - Does Procedural Motor Learning Benefit from Naps in Preschool Children?

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Sleep is known to benefit memory consolidation across various learning domains in young children. Preschool-aged children, in particular, are unique as they shift from biphasic to monophasic sleep, with naps conferring additional benefits to learning and memory. Naps improve emotion regulation and attention and enhance declarative memory consolidation. Whether naps broadly enhance procedural memory, however, remains unclear. In this study, we examined the impact of napping on implicit motor learning with a mirror tracing task. Using a within-subject design, preschool children (age 34-67 months; N= 67) learned the novel motor task prior to a nap or comparable period of quiet wake. Children were then assessed on the task at three time points: immediately after initial learning, after their nap/wake period, and the following morning - 24 hours after initial learning. Changes in performance were measured through average drawing time and average error time (time spent drawing outside the shape template). Based on previous work examining motor sequence learning in preschool children (Desrochers et al., 2016), we hypothesized that the children would not show significant changes in performance between nap and wake conditions immediately following the midday interval but would show improved performance the following morning only in the nap condition. Consistent with this hypothesis, our results showed no significant differences in performance change between conditions from baseline to post-nap/wake assessments. However, significant differences were found between conditions from post-nap/wake to 24 hour post-learning, with children showing superior reduction in error time after a nap compared to the wake period (p= .04). When comparing baseline to improvement 24 hours later, no significant differences were found between conditions for any performance measures, though error time shows promise (p= .08). Overall, our results suggest that procedural learning in preschool children may be supported by napping, perhaps by protecting the memory until the learning is consolidated via overnight sleep, thus the delayed benefit in performance.

Authors

• Jennifer Holmes, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Shirley Plucinski, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca M. C. Spencer, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author