A new study suggests that babies in their first year of life can retain more information by taking a nice, long nap after learning something.
A team from the University of Sheffield in England held a trial with 216 babies between six- and 12-months-old, teaching each one three new tasks involving playing with hand puppets. Half went to sleep within four hours, and the other half either slept less than 30 minutes or never fell asleep at all. The next day, the babies were asked to repeat what they were taught, and on average the group that slept a long time could complete 1.5 tasks, while the group that didn't sleep couldn't do any.
Dr. Jane Herbert from the department of psychology at the University of Sheffield told BBC News that while most people thought "wide-awake was best" when it comes to learning, it "may be the events just before sleep that are most important." The researchers say that "strikingly little is known" about sleep in the first year of life, and this shows that activities like reading at bedtime are even more important than previously thought.
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