title: Sleep in children enhances preferentially emotional declarative but not procedural memories.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: 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
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prehn-Kristensen
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Göder
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chirobeja
authors.forename: Inka
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bressmann
authors.forename: Roman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ferstl
authors.forename: Lioba
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Baving
mesh_terms: 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