The effect of napping and nighttime sleep on memory in infants.

Abstract

During the first year of life, infants devote the majority of their time to sleep. Research in adults has shown that sleep supports a variety of memory processes. Surprisingly, sleep's function for infant memory has only started to receive attention in research. In this chapter, we will describe age-related changes in sleep and in memory processing over the first years of life, as well as methods to capture both sleep and memory. Then, we will review current findings on the effects of sleep on memory processing in infants. Lastly, we will also point out gaps in current knowledge and describe potential avenues for future research. Overall, the results of recent experimental studies provide evidence that timely, extended napping is involved in how memories are encoded and stored in the long-term and contribute to the formation of knowledge networks in infants.