A daytime nap is an essential part of every baby's routine.
It allows newborns and toddlers the downtime they need to cope with crucial physical and mental development that happens in a child's early years. But scientists now believe daytime naps are also vital in helping to boost a baby's memory.
The first study of its kind, carried out by a team at Britain's University of Sheffield and Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, has identified a link between sleep and babies' development in their first year. The findings reveal half an hour's nap can boost a baby's memory, helping them retain the new skills they have learned. The study focused on 216 healthy 6- to 12-month-old infants, and tested their ability to recall newly learned skills.
The babies were shown how to remove and manipulate a mitten from a hand puppet, and were given the opportunity to reproduce these actions after delays of four and 24 hours. Those who did not nap after learning were compared with age-matched babies who napped for at least 30 minutes within four hours of learning new skills.
The experiment found only infants who had napped after the learning activity remembered the new skills while those who hadn't slept showed no evidence of remembering the new information. After a 24-hour delay, the babies given naps also showed significantly better recall compared with infants in the no-nap group.
