Stability and changes in sleep regulation: A longitudinal study from 3 months to 3 years

Abstract

The goal of the study was to examine the developmental course of sleep consolidation from infancy to preschool. The sleep of 50 healthy infants aged 3 months was recorded, at home, with actigraphs (computerised activity monitors). Follow-up recordings were carried out at 6, 9, 12, 20, and 42 months (due to attrition and occasional technical failures, complete sleep records were not available for all subjects at all ages). The main findings were that by 12 months, nocturnal sleep is well organised; nevertheless, sleep continues to become less fragmented and more efficient beyond the first year. The child’s level of motor activity during sleep, and the overall sleep efficiency were moderately stable across time. In contrast, sleep duration and the number of nightwaking episodes were unstable from 3 to 42 months of age. Taken together, the continuity and change in the group trajectory of sleep maturation, as well as the stability and the periodic instability in the individuals’ rank across time, may be interpreted to reflect the interplay among constitutional, maturational, and experiential factors.

Sleep Patterns in School-age Children with Asperger Syndrome or High-functioning Autism: A Follow-up Study

“…There are a few long-term studies which are based on PSG (Anders and Keener 1985), and there is a scarcity of longitudinal actigraphic studies. To the best of our knowledge only one previous report has published longitudinal actigraphic data on young children from early childhood (Scher et al 2004), and longitudinal actigraphic data on school-age children seems to be lacking. However, short-term actigraphic studies conducted on school-age children have been performed, and they have confirmed age-and gender-related differences in sleep patterns (Gaina et al 2004(Gaina et al , 2005Sadeh et al 2000).…”

Delayed weekend sleep pattern in German infants and children aged 0–6 years

“…However, research on young children is scarce, and some aspects have not been addressed sufficiently in previous work, such as the differences between weekdays and weekends, changes in chronotype, the developmental timing of social jet lag (Wittmann et al 2006) and some aspects of parental behaviour (but see exemptions below). Research on sleep spans from neonates over the group of toddlers and infants (Reynolds and Mallay 1933;de Roquefeuil et al 1993;Kelmanson 2004;Scher et al 2004;Acebo et al 2005), primary school children (Foster 1928;Mantz et al 1995;Owens et al 2000;Sadeh et al 2002) and, finally, adolescents (Carskadon et al 1993(Carskadon et al , 1998Tynja¨la¨et al 1993;Teixeira et al 2007;Loessl et al 2008;Randler 2008). A few pioneering studies spanned the time between infancy and adolescence and have been organized as longitudinal studies (Andrade et al 1993; Thorleifsdottir et al 2002;Iglowstein et al 2003;Scher et al 2004;Jenni et al 2007).…”

Child Sleep Ontogeny and Application of the Standardized Questionnaire for the Evaluation of Child Behaviour During Sleep

“…Отмечается динамичный процесс созревания ребенка, сопровождающийся формиро-ванием у него отчетливого предпочтения ночного сна по сравнению с дневным. В этом возрасте у большин-ства детей формируется так называемая консолида-ция сна, проявляющаяся формированием продол-жительного эпизода ночного сна [24]. В то же время ночные пробуждения нередко наблюдаются у детей.…”