Abstract

Sleeping is the primary brain activity of early development, yet studies that address how sleep impacts the acquisition of new skills in infancy are scarce. Underscoring the interplay between different development domains, especially at times of emerging new skills, I will present a series of studies from my lab that bridge cognitive development, motor development, and sleep. I will discuss how individual differences in the quality of night sleep, the presence and timing of daytime naps, and gestational age impact infants’ motor problem solving. I will also discuss what the temporal relation between the onset of new motor skills and changes in infants’ sleep reveals about the function of sleep for learning in infancy.