Naptime may bolster early literacy skills among preschoolers

An indicator of early literacy skills is the ability to map letters to sounds. Some children with poor letter-sound knowledge in the preschool years may be later diagnosed as dyslexic, and previous research shows that letter sound mappings in kindergarten is associated with later reading success. There is little known about the relationship between sleep, memory development, and literacy skills.

There is initial evidence that daytime naps could be beneficial for preschool children. The University of Oxford, the University of York, and the University ofSheffield conducted research on whether a daytime nap can help preschool children learn letter sounds and recognize printed words. The study shows that naps could be beneficial for preschool children.

The lecturer in the school of education at the university said that having a nap after learning might help with a new task.

Thirty-two three to five-year-old children from two daycare centers in Australia who napped regularly participated in the study. The daycare centers didn't teach letter names or sounds.

Each child participated in seven sessions over two to four weeks.

• Pre-test: To establish baseline levels of letter-sound knowledge.
• Letter-sound mapping training: Held a week apart under both "nap" and "no-nap conditions."
• Post-tests: To assess learning once after a nap and once after a period of wakefulness. To examine whether any effect of nap on learning was maintained, knowledge was also reassessed one day later. Each session assessed letter-sound mappings and using explicit learning (e.g., "Which sound does the letter C make?") and knowledge generalization tasks (e.g., "Here's Tav and Cav, which one is /kav/?").

The authors predicted that if a nap benefits letter-sounds skills, then children who napped would perform better on both explicit learning tasks and knowledge transfer tasks. napping appeared to affect performance on the knowledge transfer test. The benefit was maintained the next day.

The study was conducted at daycare centers to make the children more comfortable, but they weren't able to measure the features of sleep that are related to the sleep benefits. This is an important direction for future research. The authors note that since the nap effect was only found in generalizing letter-sound knowledge to recognizing printed words, a larger sample size is recommended for future research.

Anne Castles, Professor of Psychological Studies at Macquarie University, said that the research provides initial evidence that naps facilitate the acquisition and application of letter -sound mappings.

More information: Nap effects on preschool children's learning of letter-sound mappings, Child Development (2022). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13753 Journal information: Child Development Citation: Naptime may bolster early literacy skills among preschoolers (2022, March 29) retrieved 29 March 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-03-naptime-bolster-early-literacy-skills.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.