The role of sleep on children's motor memory consolidation in a motor sequence task

Sleep has been shown to affect the consolidation of motor memory in adults. However, sleep-dependent consolidation is not well-specified in children as like as adults. So, the purpose of this study is 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 city of 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 including two groups of the sleep (8±1pm & 8±1am) and the wake (8±1am & 8±1pm), had done five training blocks with 90 trails in each block in acquisition phase. The retention (consolidation) and transfer tests were done 12 hours after acquisition phase in all groups. For analyzing data 2×2 and 4×2 Mixed ANOVA tests were used. The results in 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 were not significant (P ≥0.05). The results indicated that motor memory consolidation occurred in sleep and wake groups, but it wasn’t sleep dependent. The findings revealed that the children‘s performance is  improved and enhanced not only through the training sessions, but also after learning phase in offline period; the memory of learned skill enhanced in the passage of the time. Therefore, sleep wasn’t the essential factor in enhancement of offline learning and transfer of sequential implicit motor task in children.