ABSTRACT

This chapter examines Annette Karmiloff-Smith's involvement in sleep research in the latter part of her career. Dr. Katharine Hughes was one of Annette’s final graduate students, studying memory development in Down syndrome (DS) in the context of the LonDowns consortium, and Professor Jamie Edgin began a personal friendship and science collaboration with Annette when she initiated her final studies of DS in 2012. Sleep has been shown to be correlated with daytime behaviour and attention, academic achievement and numerous other developmental attainments important for daily function in children and adults. Sleep is divided into two main types: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM. Present theories of sleep’s role in memory retention suggest that sleep provides active as well as passive functions to modify memory representations, including integration with existing knowledge. Direct comparisons of sleep effects between young infants and individuals at differing developing stages can be exceedingly difficult.