ArticleDevelopmental science2021
Slow wave sleep in naps supports episodic memories in early childhood.
Article in Developmental science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trajectories of hippocampal subregion development in the first years of life and their association with school-aged episodic memory outcomes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Assessing sleep, cognition and overnight memory performance in neurotypically developing youth in a children's hospital.Frontiers in sleep · 2026Article
- Does sleep help children to generalise features like adults?Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- No effect of napping on episodic foresight and prospective memory in kindergarten children.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Pediatric sleep electrophysiology: Using polysomnography in developmental cognitive neuroscience.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Review
- The Role of Sleep in Memory Consolidation and Reading in Dyslexia.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Review
- PSGpower: A MATLAB toolbox for analyzing sleep EEG data.SoftwareX · 2025Article
- Influence of naps on sedentary time and physical activity in early childhood.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Contributions of memory and brain development to the bioregulation of naps and nap transitions in early childhood.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Relations between sleep patterns early in life and brain development: A review.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2022Review
- Nap effects on preschool children's learning of letter-sound mappings.Child development · 2022Article
- [An overview on sleep research based on functional near infrared spectroscopy].Sheng wu yi xue gong cheng xue za zhi = Journal of biomedical engineering = Shengwu yixue gongchengxue zazhi · 2021Review
- Nonrapid eye movement sleep characteristics and relations with motor, memory, and cognitive ability from infancy to preadolescence.Developmental psychobiology · 2021Review
- The memory benefits of two naps per day during infancy: A pilot investigation.Infant behavior & development · 2021Article
- Prior Exposure and Toddlers' Sleep-Related Memory for Novel Words.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Sleep and human cognitive development.Sleep medicine reviews · 2021Review
- Role of Napping for Learning across the Lifespan.Current sleep medicine reports · 2020Article
- Influence of sleep and nap habituality on mnemonic discrimination in early childhood: An online study.Cognitive developmentArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Naps have been shown to benefit visuospatial learning in early childhood. This benefit has been associated with sleep spindles during the nap. However, whether young children's naps and their accompanying physiology benefit other forms of declarative learning is unknown. Using a novel storybook task, we found performance in children (N = 22, mean age = 51.23 months) was better following a nap compared to performance following an equivalent interval spent awake. Moreover, performance remained better the following day if a nap followed learning. Change in post-nap performance was positively associated with the amount of time spent in slow wave sleep during the nap. This suggests that slow wave sleep in naps may support episodic memory consolidation in early childhood. Taken in conjunction with prior work, these results suggest that multiple features of brain physiology during naps may contribute to declarative memory processing in early childhood.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.