Napping has long been linked to helping a child's brain development, so many parents make their children sleep for long hours at a young age. As such, a new study reveals that children who need to sleep are likelier to have poorer cognitive skills and vocabulary than those who sleep less.
Sleeping and Cognitive Skills
According to Newsweek, most parents are concerned regarding how much nap time their children get. A University of East Anglia study examined children's cognitive development and how it related to the amount of sleep they had.
This suggested a tendency for children who nap more frequently to have poorer cognitive skills and vocabulary than their peers. However, this doesn't mean that naps result in slower brain development.
NSF reports multiple cognitive benefits of napping, including emotional regulation and better attention and memory. This applies to both children and adults, with more nap time being required for children with poorer cognitive abilities so that they'll be able to process the world better.
Teodora Gliga, the author of the study, shared with Newsweek how they believe that children who displayed cognitive skills that were less mature weren't able to store as much short-term information. This leads to more long-term information storage and more short-term memory space.
Gliga also highlighted the next big question was how the brain sent signals to people regarding their need to consolidate information. She explained that this meant finding the explanation of how short-term memory fill-up would result in the onset of sleep.
Baby Development
According to the JCPP journal, the study was conducted by observing 463 infants during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. This involved children from just eight months to three years old, with parents asking about their children's sleeping habits.
The questions to parents were about their child's sleeping patterns, memory, focus ability, and vocabulary. Gliga said the lockdown allowed them to closely study the intrinsic sleep of the child since when children often nap less than needed during childcare.
During the pandemic, nurseries remained closed, meaning the child's natural sleep patterns experienced less disturbance. Gliga highlighted how the children in the study were part of the daycare.
Findings of the Study
Gliga highlighted how they discovered sleeping structure for daytime naps as an indicator of cognitive development. As such, infants that took shorter naps more frequently had worse cognitive functions and vocabularies.
For older children, they found the negative association being stronger between frequent naps and vocabulary. The Economic and Social Research Council funded the study, which was part of the Social Distancing and Development project.
The study was part of the UK Research and Innovation Agency's COVID-19 rapid response.
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