IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v6y2015i1d10.1038_ncomms7004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Generalization of word meanings during infant sleep

Author

Listed:
  • Manuela Friedrich

    (Humboldt University of Berlin
    Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences)

  • Ines Wilhelm

    (Child Development Center, University Children’s Hospital
    Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology and Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen)

  • Jan Born

    (Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology and Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen)

  • Angela D. Friederici

    (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences)

Abstract

Sleep consolidates memory and promotes generalization in adults, but it is still unknown to what extent the rapidly growing infant memory benefits from sleep. Here we show that during sleep the infant brain reorganizes recent memories and creates semantic knowledge from individual episodic experiences. Infants aged between 9 and 16 months were given the opportunity to encode both objects as specific word meanings and categories as general word meanings. Event-related potentials indicate that, initially, infants acquire only the specific but not the general word meanings. About 1.5 h later, infants who napped during the retention period, but not infants who stayed awake, remember the specific word meanings and, moreover, successfully generalize words to novel category exemplars. Independently of age, the semantic generalization effect is correlated with sleep spindle activity during the nap, suggesting that sleep spindles are involved in infant sleep-dependent brain plasticity.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuela Friedrich & Ines Wilhelm & Jan Born & Angela D. Friederici, 2015. "Generalization of word meanings during infant sleep," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7004
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7004
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms7004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Manuela Friedrich & Matthias Mölle & Jan Born & Angela D. Friederici, 2022. "Memory for nonadjacent dependencies in the first year of life and its relation to sleep," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.