Before they enter school, children’s ability to match letters and sounds is known to be an indicator of their reading and writing ability. Conversely, children with difficulty in this area run a greater risk of being diagnosed with dyslexia or dysorthography one day.
Published March 29 in the journal Child Development, a study has just looked at the relationship between sleep, memory development and reading and writing skills. Conducted by researchers from Macquarie University (Australia) and the British universities of Oxford, York and Sheffield on thirty-two children aged 3 to 5 years, it attests, in a provisional way, that taking a nap in the day could be beneficial in their learning of letters and sounds. These children were enrolled in two day care centers in Sydney, which gave them regular naps, without formally teaching them about the name or the sound of the letters.
Each child was enrolled in seven sessions, lasting 2 to 4 weeks. First, the scientists assessed and recorded their knowledge “verbal” basic. Then they trained them to match letters and sounds. For example, by having to answer the question “What sound does the letter C make?” in front of a corresponding image or, to gauge the generalization of such knowledge, the drawing of two men “Tav” and «Cav» and having to designate which of the two was /kav/.
Reinvest information
These tests were going to be carried out once after the child took a nap and then, at weekly intervals, without this rest period. Each time (with or without a nap), the effects of exercise were assessed 24 hours later.
It turns out that taking a nap after learning seems to help reinvest the newly learned information in a new task. The researchers thus observed a positive effect of the siesta on children’s learning of correspondences between letters and sounds and, in particular, on the use of this knowledge to decipher unfamiliar words. Which is a completely positive sign of future ease in reading and writing.
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In addition to the modest size of its sample, a defect of the study is to be found in one of its qualities: if it was carried out in real conditions and not in the laboratory, so that the children are more at ease, the researchers have not been able to measure objective data likely to affect the results, such as various physiological characteristics of sleep, not to mention the genetic variables that we now know to have a heavy influence on learning to read and write. The fact remains that these data are encouraging and, once replicated and refined in subsequent work, have what it takes to further optimize the acquisition of literacy in very young children.
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