How Often a Child Naps Reflects Their Individual Cognitive Need – Health and Medicine

2023-08-06 02:54:26

Daytime sleep structure may serve as an indicator of children’s cognitive development, according to a recent study showing that some children with poorer cognitive abilities need to nap more frequently.

The frequency with which a child naps can be interpreted as an indicator of their individual cognitive need, according to a recent study carried out at the University of East Anglia (United Kingdom), in collaboration with researchers from the Universities of Oxford, of Oxford Brookes, of Leeds and of Warwick. The work published in the journal ‘CPP Advances’ reveals that some children who are less talkative and have poorer cognitive abilities may need to take naps more frequently.

“Our research shows that how often a child naps reflects their individual cognitive need. Some are more efficient at consolidating information during sleep, so they tend to nap less frequently, while those with less fluid vocabularies or a lower score on a measure of executive function sleep more frequently,” according to the principal investigator Teodora Gliga.

The research team studied 463 babies between the ages of eight months and three years during the lockdown in 2020. Parents were surveyed about their children’s sleep patterns, their ability to focus on a task, keep information in their memory and the number of words they understood and could say. They also asked parents about their socioeconomic status, including their ZIP code, income and education, and about the amount of screen time and outdoor activities their child participated in.

“The confinement gave us the opportunity to study the intrinsic sleep needs of children because when they are in daycare, they rarely nap as much as they need. What we found is that the structure of daytime sleep can be considered an indicator of cognitive development,” said the expert.

The researchers also found that this negative association between verbal fluency and nap frequency was stronger in older children. “While most parents told us their children’s sleep was not affected by lockdown during the pandemic, parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to report worsening sleep. “Screen time increased during lockdown and outdoor activities decreased, but this does not explain the differences in children’s sleep,” according to Gliga.

“Our findings suggest that children have different sleep needs: some may give up naps earlier because they are no longer needed. Others may still need to nap after three years of age. Likewise, caregivers should encourage frequent naps in preschool-age children,” concluded the lead researcher. M.T. T. (SyM)