Sleep in children enhances preferentially emotional declarative but not procedural memories.
Although the consolidation of several memory systems is enhanced by sleep in adults, recent studies suggest that sleep supports declarative memory but not procedural memory in children. In the current study, the influence of sleep on emotional declarative memory (recognition task) and procedural memory (mirror tracing task) in 20 healthy children (10-13 years of age) was examined. After sleep, children showed an improvement in declarative memory. Separate analysis with respect to the emotional stimulus content revealed that sleep enhances the recognition of emotional stimuli (p>.001) rather than neutral stimuli (p=.084). In the procedural task, however, no sleep-enhanced memory improvement was observed. The results indicate that sleep in children, comparable to adults, enhances predominantly emotional declarative memory; however, in contrast to adults, it has no effect on the consolidation of procedural memory.
Prehn-Kristensen
Alexander
A
Center for Integrative Psychiatry, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Christian-Albrechts-University School of Medicine, Kiel 24105, Germany. a.prehn@zip-kiel.de
Göder
Robert
R
Chirobeja
Stefania
S
Bressmann
Inka
I
Ferstl
Roman
R
Baving
Lioba
L
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis