According to the University of Sheffield and Ruhr University in Germany, napping helps children to develop their memory and retain new behaviours they have learnt.
A team of researchers from the universities tested the ability of 216 six-to 12-month-olds to recall newly learned skills.
The children were shown how to remove and manipulate a mitten from a hand puppet, and given the chance to reproduce these actions after a period of four and 24 hours.
To determine whether taking a nap after learning made any difference to children being able to retain the new skills, the behaviours of children who did not take a nap were compared to those who napped for at least 30 minutes within four hours of learning.
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