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Reviewed By: Laura Martin,
SOURCES: 2007 Medical Reference from Medstar Television. Rebecca Gomez, PhD, Researcher, Assoc. Professor Of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Tuscon, AZ., Lynn Nadel, PhD, Researcher, Regents' Professor, University of Arizona, Tucson, Tuscon, AZ.
© 1999-2011 Medstar Television
We've all heard the statistics about the importance of sleep, but what about naps?
We're finding that naps are crucial for learning.
Psychologists at the University of Arizona are studying the connection between a quick snooze and learning.
Our goal in general is to sort of understand how infants learn, how they acquire any knowledge whatsoever.
What we found is that their learning is transformed with sleep.
In their study, 15-month olds were exposed to an artificial language that sounds like this.
vot, balas, rut..
It's nonsense to adults, but Doctor Rebecca Gomez, who created the language, says it's a great learning tool for infants.
We have rules like that in natural language where we have to keep track of information in the beginning of a sentence and information at the end.
The babies are exposed to the artificial language during 15 minutes of play time. Then half of the participants take a nap, the others do not. Four hours later, they're all tested to see what they've learned.
What we're finding is that sleep transforms the memory in some way so that infants can actually recognize new sentences.
The infants who didn't have a nap only recognized the words that were heard during playtime. Parents are taking these early results to heart.
I never really understood how important naps were. Um, for like the mental aspect of his learning and growth. So definitely I'm gonna try not to miss his naps.
Definitely important information to sleep on. For WebMD, I'm Damon Meharg.
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