Memory for emotional images across sleep versus wake in school-aged children

Sleep is important for emotional well-being, memory, and development in children. Regarding memory, sleep has been shown to advantage accuracy for declarative tasks but not procedural tasks. There is some evidence to suggest that sleep provides a relatively greater benefit for memory of negative emotional versus neutral images. However, the extent to which sleep benefits emotionally positive memories in children is not clear. This study assessed memory after nocturnal sleep versus daytime wake in a within-person design involving a sample of 40 children aged 7 to 14 years (M = 10.6 ± 1.9 years; 18 boys and 22 girls) for images of negative, neutral, and positive valences. Results show that after accounting for response time, memory accuracy overall was greater after sleep compared with equivalent time of wake and memory accuracy was greatest for positive images compared with both negative and neutral images. However, there was no difference between memory for negative images and that for neutral images in children, and there was no condition by valence interaction. Sleep characteristics as recorded using actigraphy, diary, and parent report were not predictive of memory performance after sleep when correcting for multiple comparisons. Overall, the results suggest that sleep may benefit memory in otherwise healthy children but that despite a bias toward memory for positive items over both negative and neutral items, there is not a relatively greater benefit for emotional versus neutral memory consolidation across sleep periods compared with wake periods.