Dimitriou, D; Joyce, A; Hill, C; Karmiloff-Smith, A; (2018) A cross-syndrome comparison of sleep-dependent learning on a cognitive procedural task. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities , 124 (4) pp. 339-353. 10.1352/1944-7558-124.4.339.

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Abstract

Sleep plays a key role in the consolidation of newly acquired information and skills into long term memory. Children with Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS) frequently experience sleep problems, abnormal sleep architecture and difficulties with learning; thus, we predicted that children from these clinical populations would demonstrate impairments in sleep-dependent memory consolidation relative to typically developing (TD) children on a cognitive procedural task: The Tower of Hanoi. Children with DS (n = 17) and WS (n = 22) and TD children (n = 34) completed the Tower of Hanoi task. They were trained on the task either in the morning or evening, then completed it again following counterbalanced retention intervals of daytime wake and night time sleep. TD children and children with WS benefitted from sleep for enhanced memory consolidation and improved their performance on the task by reducing the number of moves taken to completion, and by making fewer rule violations. We did not find evidence of sleep-dependent learning in children with DS, suggesting that these children are not only delayed, but atypical in their learning strategies. Importantly, our findings have implications for educational strategies for all children, specifically considering circadian influences on new learning and children’s night time sleep as an aid to learning.

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