The Role of Sleep in Children's Motor Memory Consolidation in a Motor Sequence Task

Sleep has been shown to have an impact on the consolidation of motor memory in adults. However, sleep-dependent consolidation is not well-specified among children compared with adults. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of sleep on childrenchr('39')s motor memory consolidation. The participants were 32 voluntary boys aging from 10 to 12 years old from Kerman, which had the necessary qualifications for entering the study. Serial Reaction Time Task was used to determine the implicit memory in children. The participants were allocated into a sleep group (8±1pm and 8±1am) and a wake group (8±1am and 8±1pm). Each group underwent five training blocks consisiting of 90 trails in each block in the acquisition phase. The retention (consolidation) and transfer tests were administered 12 hours after the acquisition phase in both groups. For analyzing data 2×2 and 4×2 Mixed ANOVA tests were used. The results in the retention and transfer tests showed that the reaction time was significantly different in two blocks (P > 0.05), but the effect of group and block interaction was not significant (P ≥ 0.05). The results also indicated that motor memory consolidation occurred in sleep and wake groups, however, it was not sleep-dependent. The findings revealed that children‘s performance was improved and enhanced not only through the training sessions, but after the learning phase in the offline period. In addition, the memory associated with a learned skill enhanced over time. It can be concluded that sleep was not the essential factor in the enhancement of offline learning and the transfer of sequential implicit motor task among children.