Reading before a nap benefits learning for toddlers

Reading before a nap benefits learning for toddlers.

A connection between sleep and learning has already been identified as beneficial for adults and older children.

Now University of Sussex psychologists Dr Jessica Horst and PhD candidate Sophie Williams have shown that three-year-olds who take a nap after having stories read to them will also perform better later in word-learning tasks.

Their study, published in Frontiers in Developmental Psychology today, involved 48 British children, half of whom took afternoon naps, and half of whom didn't.

They were read either the same story, or three different stories, but were exposed to the same number of unfamiliar words.

When tested two and a half hours later, 24 hours later and a week later, those children who had been read the same story before their nap performed significantly better than those who hadn't had a sleep.

Significantly, those children who had been read three different stories before their sleep performed 33 per cent better than those who had stayed awake after hearing those stories.

On subsequent tests, the researchers found the wakeful ones never caught up with their peers in word recall.

Jessica Horst

Previous studies by Dr Horst have shown that being read the same story rather than different stories was more beneficial to learning new words.

But the new study shows that sleep can have an additional significant advantage, especially when the children are exposed to different stories.

Dr Horst says: "Overall, all of the children in the study did very well—reading is always good, at any age and any time.

But, children who were learning something particularly difficult (new words from several stories) especially benefited from hearing the stories right before sleeping.

In fact, these children ended up learning the words as well as the children who had heard the same stories again and again, which we knew would be easier."

Dr Horst points that many studies have shown young children are now sleeping less than ever before and consistently less than recommended guidelines.

Chronically short sleep is significantly related to poorer vocabulary scores, childhood obesity and externalising behaviours, such as tantrums.

"Many preschool children take an afternoon nap, yet classroom naps are increasingly being curtailed and replaced due to curriculum demands," she adds.

"Given the growing body of evidence that sleep consolidation has a significant effect on children's learning, such policies may be doing our children a huge disservice."

"In fact, findings like those from the current study indicate we should be encouraging young children to nap and should take advantage of the period right before they nap for instruction in key academic areas such as word learning and arithmetic."

More information: "Goodnight Book: Sleep Consolidation Improves Word Learning via Storybooks." Sophie E. Williams and Jessica S. Horst. Front. Psychol. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00184

Disabled People with Permanent Brain Injury face UK benefits 'trap'

Disabled people with permanent brain injuries are stuck in a 'revolving door' of benefits assessments and constant pressure to remove their only source of income, it has been claimed.

The UK brain injury charity Headway and Scottish personal injury lawyers Digby Brown have said many people with brain injuries are failing the government's new benefits assessments.

Many have their benefits reinstated on appeal.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWS) claim that the assessments will help people avoid a "life on benefits," which is a UK Government political term for cutting benefits.

Some people have had their benefits removed and reinstated, following appeal at the High Court, three times in the last two years.

Anyone who is claiming benefits for a disability or illness now has to have regular and humiliating "work capability assessments" under changes to the benefits system brought in by the UK London government in 2008.

Assessments are carried out by the already discredited, Atos Healthcare for the Department of Work and Pensions. Atos's performance is measured on how many people they can remove from the benefits system.

Simon Glen, Headway project co-ordinator, claimed the assessors don't ask probing questions.

He said: "Thinking problems - problems with memory or planning or concentration - can all appear hidden but they really affect your ability to live a normal life.

"If you don't remember how to get somewhere, where you are, or who people are, that really affects your life.

"The assessment process doesn't attempt to pick up these cognitive problems."

"It can be an absolute nightmare for clients," said Kathleen McMonagle, a client support manager with Digby Brown.

"Time and time again they're going for these assessments and being asked a very closed set of questions that leads to a pre-determined result (i.e. every candidate is fit for work and will have a costly and stressful fight the UK Gov dept on appeal to prove otherwise).

"Normally, a decision is made that they're fit for work. They go to appeal. They win. They go back to the Department for Work and Pensions and they're automatically referred for another grueling health assessment.

"They fail again, and we're back to square one." It's an oppressive and de-humanising process aimed at reducing benefit costs for UK Government at the expense of disabled and injured people.

Standard questions
One individual who had suffered a severe brain injury when he had an epileptic seizure, has had his benefits removed and reinstated three times in the last two years.

He explained: "They don't attempt to understand the individual effect of the brain injury, and they don't even ask you the relevant questions.

"They just ask you standard closed questions which require a 'yes' or a 'no'. It's all very worrying because then you have to go to appeal. It's not in any way fair."

Increasing Costs of Appeal
Digby Brown has seen a big increase in the number of clients who are constantly having to go to appeal to have their benefits reinstated.

It provides a welfare rights service to its existing clients and also to people referred by charities such as Headway.

Official figures suggest around 30% of decisions are being overturned but Digby Brown says 90% of clients with brain injuries are having decisions reversed.

ATOS
Atos claim that the UK Government have designed the process and the questionnaires used, which confirms the cynical manipulation of data to reach a determined outcome.

They also added that although all those who carry out work capability assessments are fully trained doctors, nurses and physiotherapists with at least three years clinical experience, they are not allowed to diverge from the process nor are they permitted their own 'opinion' on the result.

Inside information reveals that the Atos doctors and staff are also concerned at being used as dumb tools to further an oppressive UK government policy.

Work and Pensions Rhetoric
A UK Government spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions issued an empty and politically correct statement to support the government's discredited policy for the disabled and injured:

"We know that conditions affect different people in different ways and can change over time, so it's right that people should be reassessed rather than written off to life on benefits."

Chronic Stress in Pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood

A new study in animals shows that chronic stress during pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood, a finding that researchers suggest could increase understanding of postpartum depression.

Rat mothers showed an increase in brain cell connections in regions associated with learning, memory and mood.

In contrast, the brains of mother rats that were stressed twice a day throughout pregnancy did not show this increase.

The researchers were specifically interested in dendritic spines – hair-like growths on brain cells that are used to exchange information with other neurons.

Previous animal studies conducted by lead author Benedetta Leuner of Ohio State University showed that an increase of dendritic spines in new mothers’ brains was associated with improved cognitive function on a task that requires behavioral flexibility – in essence, enabling more effective multitasking.

The dendritic spines increased by about 20 percent in these brain regions in new mothers, according to her findings.

The stress in this new study negated those brain benefits of motherhood, causing the stressed rats’ brains to match brain characteristics of animals that had no reproductive or maternal experience.

The stressed rats also had less physical interaction with their babies than did unstressed rats, a behaviour observed in human mothers who experience postpartum depression.

“Animal mothers in our research that are unstressed show an increase in the number of connections between neurons. Stressed mothers don’t,” said Leuner, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State.

“We think that makes the stressed mothers more vulnerable. They don’t have the capacity for brain plasticity that the unstressed mothers do, and somehow that’s contributing to their susceptibility to depression.”


Previous research has suggested that there are a number of risk factors for postpartum depression, including hormone fluctuations, prior history of mental illness and environmental factors such as smoking or low socioeconomic status.

One of the strongest predictors, however, is chronic stress during pregnancy, so Leuner sought to create an animal model that could help explain brain changes linked to postpartum depression.

“It’s devastating not only for the mother, because it affects her well-being, but previous research also has shown that children of depressed mothers have impaired cognitive and social development, may have impaired physical development, and are more likely as adults to have depression or anxiety,” she said.

“A better understanding of postpartum depression is important to help the mother but also to prevent some of the damaging effects that this disorder can have on the child.”

The researchers exposed pregnant rats to stress twice a day by limiting their mobility on some days and on other days placing them in water. For three weeks after the rats gave birth, Leuner and colleagues monitored the rats.

The animals showed classic signs of the effects of stress, including lower than normal weight gain and enlarged adrenal glands, a sign of high stress-hormone production. The mothers stressed during pregnancy also gave birth to smaller pups.

“And they were not very good mothers,” Leuner said. After separation from pups for 30 minutes, unstressed mothers would gather up their babies, put them in the nest and nurse them. Stressed mother rats left the pups scattered around, wandered around the cage and fed the babies less frequently.

The stressed mother rats also exhibited more floating than unstressed rats in a water test; animals that float rather than swim are showing depressive-like symptoms.

“These findings in rats mimic some of the symptoms that are seen in women with postpartum depression,” Leuner said.

An examination of the animals’ brains showed that the rats exposed to chronic stress did not grow the additional dendritic spines in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex that the unstressed mother rats did.

The stressed rats’ brains more closely resembled the brains of control rats that had never been mothers.

“We don’t yet know what the exact trigger is for the increase in spines in motherhood, but we know that the increase goes away with stress,” Leuner said.

She is continuing the work by investigating whether the beneficial effects of motherhood on cognitive functions are also blocked in mothers who are exposed to pregnancy stress as well as whether hormonal factors play a role.