The unique contributions of day and night sleep to infant motor problem solving

Abstract

The current study sought to tease apart the unique contributions of napping and nighttime sleep to infant learning, specifically in the context of motor problem solving. We challenged 54 walking infants to solve a novel locomotor problem at three time points—training, test, and follow-up the next morning. One group of infants napped during the delay between training and test. Another group did not sleep during the delay. A third group received the test immediately after training with no delay. Only the Nap group’s strategy choices continued to improve through the follow-up session, suggesting that daytime sleep has an active role in strengthening otherwise fragile memory. Although group did not affect strategy maintenance, walk experience did, suggesting that task difficulty may shape the impact of sleep on learning. Thus, day sleep and night sleep make independent contributions to the consolidation of motor problem-solving strategies during infancy.