Recently, adolescent sleep research has produced conflicting results about the effect of sleep on cognition in this age group. Some have proposed that adolescents possess a mechanism for cognitive resiliency that allows their cognitive performance to remain stable despite restricted sleep. Others maintain that the conflicting outcomes stem from the sleep/wake parameters traditionally used in sleep research that are rarely adjusted to allow for natural adolescent sleep rhythms, which may be masking the true effect of inadequate sleep on adolescent cognitive functioning. This study aims to elucidate these two theories by comparing both sleep time and sleep rhythm alignment with cognitive functioning. We tracked 16 adolescents' sleep for one week and determined their sleep time and whether they were sleeping in alignment with their natural sleep rhythms. Both of these variables were then compared to subjects' performance on an n-back task of working memory on Monday morning. The results showed that neither sleep amount nor natural sleep rhythm alignment were able to predict any measure of the working memory test. These results support the theory of a cognitive resiliency mechanism in adolescents, and do not support sleep rhythm misalignment as a significant confounding variable in previous adolescent sleep studies.

Relational memory refers to memory for arbitrary associations among components of experience, and is thought to be critically dependent on the hippocampus. Previous studies suggested that age-related differences in relational memory were consistent with a protracted developmental trajectory of hippocampus. Recently, eye tracking studies conducted in infants have concluded that eye movement detection could provide one indirect index of relational memory and hippocampal function in infants as young as 6 months. While the eye-based memory expression has been detected in adults on relational memory tasks, this effect has been less studied across development, and the few studies that have been conducted have suggested discontinuity in eye-movement behaviors across age. The purpose of the current study is to examine the development of relational memory in middle childhood (7-8 years of age) by utilizing a face-scene binding paradigm. Behavioral results revealed that adults showed higher identification accuracy than children when recalling matching faces based on scene cues. The eye movement data indicated that adults showed stronger and more rapid looking preference to matching face during correct test trials, and the proportion of viewing time towards matching face was significantly greater than children on incorrect trials (while performance was below chance in both age groups). Therefore, eye movements do index relational memory and correct responses but show rapid onset only in adults. We discuss these results in the context of the neural systems that may support eye movement behavior across the lifespan and conclude that more work is required to determine the nature and strength of these effects prior to adopting eye-movements as a continuous measure of relational memory across development.

The purpose of this study is to determine if there exists a relation between a child's napping status and performance in a word-learning task. In determining such a relation we can better understand the mechanisms that assist children with learning information allowing us to accordingly contribute to their success. To assess word learning we employed an object-context task where 34 children aged 48-53 months were trained on two labeled objects presented on colored fabric. During testing, these objects were simultaneously presented (on the same or a different fabric) and asked to identify the correct object. After applying a two-way ANOVA of sleep (no nap, nap) and context (same, different) on word learning performance, a significant main effect of nap on word learning performance was found, F(1, 30)= 6.53, p=.02. This finding is crucial as children this age are transitioning to fewer or no naps, which can impact their ability to learn new words.

Research has shown that being exposed to a High variability of words in a new language, over less words more often (High repetition), leads to increased detection of that language's rules and that words with multiple category markings are learned better. It has not been observed how sleep would affect this type of learning, even though it has been seen as important in other parts of language learning. The current study looks at how all of these factors interact. The findings showed effects of Marking and differences between groups but sleep was not seen as a significant variable. A follow up study, currently being run, is described.

Most children discontinue daytime napping by the age of five. This study investigated the role of nap status and gender in executive functioning of Korean four-year olds, about half of whom have transitioned out of naps. Thirty-seven children living in the Gyeonggi-do area in South Korea participated in this study. A sleep diary filled out by parents was used to identify their nap habits and their executive function was assessed using the Fish Flanker Task involving three phases (standard, reverse, mixed). Looking at speed, reaction-time analyses suggested that girls take longer to warm up on the standard flanker task compared to boys a difference that diminishes by the next phase when children encounter the reverse flanker task. Looking at accuracy, children were slow to warm up. Although there were no differences in initial exposure to the standard flanker task, children were more accurate on congruent than incongruent trials in the the mixed phase regardless of nap status or gender. When shifting from the standard flanker to the reverse flanker task, habitual nappers were more accurate on incongruent trials in the reverse-flanker task compared to non-habitual nappers. There were no statistically significant differences in duration of nighttime sleep for habitual and non-habitual nappers supporting the idea that the advantage in accuracy on incongruent trials for habitual nappers was due to the nap. The results suggest that four-year olds may still receive a cognitive benefit from habitual naps, especially when they must shift between tasks.