Quality sleep can help children in boost their language skills, according to a team of researchers from the University of York.
Professor Gareth Gaskell and colleagues found sleep mechanisms related to adult learning also associated with "vocabulary acquisition" during early stages of development in children. They identified some language learning patterns in young children, after a good night's sleep, which help them obtain and maintain new words, increasing their vocabulary.
"These are truly exciting results which open up a new dimension of research in our understanding of language development. Our work provides the first evidence that sleep is associated with the integration of newly-learned words into the mental dictionaries of children," Dr. Anna Weighall, from the psychology research group at Sheffield Hallam, who was involved in the study, said in a news release.
Researchers examined the process involved in feeding newly-learned words into memory. They found 12 hours of sleep providing a suitable platform to successfully store the new words in long-term memory.
"Children's ability to recall and recognise new words improved approximately 12 hours after training, but only if sleep occurs. The key effects were maintained one week later, suggesting that these new words are retained in long-term memory," Dr. Lisa Henderson, another researcher, said.
Investigators also discovered the findings having a direct link with disordered sleep patterns and neuro-developmental disorders like autism and dyslexia in children.
"Clearly, children need to learn material well in the first place, but then they also need to sleep well in order to weave these new memories in with their established knowledge. The combination of these two components is the key to robust learning," Gaskell said.
The study is published in Developmental Science.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, children aged between five and 12 should get 10 to 11 hours sleep. Previous studies have shown poor sleep leading to heart diseases, academic problems and behavioral problems.
