Both emotions and sleep modulate memory processes. So far, the interaction of emotion, sleep, and memory during early development is completely unknown. The aim of our research project is to identify the impact of the interaction of emotions and sleep on the fast mapping of words on reference objects in toddlers.

Using a combination of electrophysiology and behavioral measures we investigate to which extent initial object-word mappings (encoding) and the later transfer of this newly acquired lexical-semantic knowledge into long-term memory (consolidation) depends on the emotional value of the words' speech melody.

In particular, brain responses shed light on both emotion-dependent encoding during the learning phase and the children’s alertness state or their sleep stage during the consolidation phase. The children’s memory performance in the subsequent behavioral test phase should clarify how far emotional prosody affects the consolidation of lexical-semantic knowledge, and whether the impact of emotion on long-term memory depends on specific sleep stages during the consolidation phase.