Mother-child interactions and child anger proneness as antecedents of changes in sleep during the preschool period.

Age-related developments in sleep during the preschool years are normative and consequential. Yet, very few studies have examined the antecedents of individual differences in such developments, and most have used parental reports of child sleep. This study aimed to investigate the roles of mutual responsiveness in mother-child interactions and child temperamental anger proneness in the prediction of changes in sleep during the preschool period. The sample was comprised of 94 children (44 girls, 50 boys) of mostly White (93%) and college-educated (85%) mothers. Mother-child mutual responsiveness and child anger proneness were assessed at 2 years, and sleep was assessed using actigraphy at the ages of 2, 3, and 4 years. Multilevel growth models revealed that higher temperamental anger proneness was concurrently associated with lower sleep efficiency and shorter nighttime sleep duration at 2 years. In regard to changes in sleep, nighttime sleep duration decreased between 2 and 4 years among children exposed to lower mutual responsiveness in interactions with their mothers. High anger proneness was related to an increase in sleep efficiency from 2 to 4 years, whereas low anger proneness was associated with a decrease in nighttime duration during the same period. No interactive effect was found between anger proneness and mother-child mutual responsiveness. These results suggest that mother-child relationships and child temperament may play different roles, not only in children's concurrent sleep patterns but also in changes in sleep across the preschool period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Quality of father-child relationships as a predictor of sleep developments during preschool years.

Substantial developmental changes in sleep occur during the preschool period, but few studies have investigated the factors that forecast these developments. The aim of this study was to examine whether three aspects of father-child relationships in toddlerhood predicted individual differences in developmental patterns of change in five actigraphy-derived sleep variables during the preschool period (N = 67; sleep assessed yearly between 2 and 4 years). In a predominantly White and middle-to-higher income sample, paternal mind-mindedness and quality of father-child interactions were assessed during father-child free play at 18 months and fathers self-reported on their involvement in childrearing at age 2. Multilevel growth modeling revealed that children whose father made more mind-related comments during father-child interactions had a higher proportion of sleep taking place during nighttime as well as shorter daytime and total sleep duration at 2 years. This was, however, followed by a relative leveling off (i.e., less rapid change) of these sleep features between 2 and 4 years. Given previous studies documenting that nighttime sleep proportion increases while daytime and total sleep duration decrease during preschool years, the findings suggest that children who are exposed to more paternal mind-mindedness may reach more mature sleep patterns earlier in development.

Sleep development in preschool predicts executive functioning in early elementary school.

This report investigates the role of normative developments in sleep during preschool years in the prediction of child EF performance at early school age. Sleep was assessed by actigraphy at ages 2, 3, and 4, and EF with behavioral tasks when children were in Grade 2. The results revealed that children whose sleep followed expected developmental trends more rapidly showed better EF performance: a more pronounced decrease in sleep duration between ages 2 and 4 predicted better subsequent working memory, whereas a more pronounced increase in sleep efficiency was predictive of better inhibitory control performance. These findings suggest that age-related development may be a key characteristic of sleep as it relates to children's executive skills.

Prospective relations between sleep in preschool years and academic achievement at school entry.

It is often assumed that adequate sleep is a key ingredient of children's school success. Research to date, however, suggests modest associations between child sleep and academic achievement. Adopting a developmental perspective, this report investigates the associations between age-related changes in sleep across the preschool period and academic achievement at school entry. Sleep was assessed by actigraphy at ages 2, 3 and 4 among 128 children from mostly White middle-class families, and their performance in reading and mathematics was tested in Grade 1. The results revealed that children whose sleep duration decreased more rapidly across the preschool period showed better performance in both reading and mathematics. These results suggest that age-related developments may be a key characteristic of sleep in the preschool years.

Disentangling the Direction of Associations between Sleep and Temperament in Toddlers.

OBJECTIVES/BACKGROUND: Although much research has investigated the associations between children's sleep and their temperament, the direction of these associations remains unclear, largely due to a lack of longitudinal studies with repeated assessments of both sleep and temperament. Aiming to clarify the temporal precedence of these two constructs, the current study investigated reciprocal associations between toddlers' sleep and temperament with a longitudinal design. PARTICIPANTS: The sample consisted of 82 toddlers (39 girls) assessed twice. METHODS: At both 2 (M = 25.23 months; SD = 1.11) and 3 years of age (M = 36.81 months; SD = 0.91), toddlers' sleep duration and quality were assessed using actigraphy and their temperament was reported by their mothers with the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire. RESULTS: Shorter nighttime sleep duration (ß = - .28, p = .03) and lower sleep efficiency (ß = - .33, p = .01) at 2 years predicted more temperamental proneness to anger at 3 years, while greater temperamental social fear at 2 years was predictive of shorter 24-hour (ß = - .44, p = .02) and nighttime (ß = - .36, p = .04) sleep duration at 3 years. Associations between temperamental activity level and sleep variables were non-significant. CONCLUSION: The direction of the associations between toddlers' sleep and their temperament may vary according to which dimension of temperament is considered. These findings should encourage practitioners to identify the beginning of the causal chain leading to sleep or temperamental difficulties so as to develop well-tailored intervention plans.

Normative developmental trajectories of actigraphic sleep variables during the preschool period: A three-wave longitudinal study.

Important changes in sleep are believed to occur in the preschool years, but studies that have documented these changes were generally cross-sectional or based on subjective sleep measures. The current longitudinal study modeled the developmental trajectories followed by five sleep variables objectively assessed during the preschool period. Children (N = 128) wore an actigraph over 3 days at 2, 3, and 4 years of age and change in sleep variables was assessed with growth curves. The results showed a linear decrease of daytime, total, and nighttime sleep duration, and a linear increase of sleep efficiency and proportion of nighttime to total sleep. For all sleep variables, the rhythm of change was relatively uniform across children, but there was significant inter-individual variation around the initial status for most variables. To our knowledge, this study is the first to model the developmental trajectories followed by several sleep variables during the preschool period.

Actigraphy data in pediatric research: the role of sleep diaries.

BACKGROUND: When assessing children's sleep using actigraphy, researchers usually rely on a sleep diary completed by a parent as an aid in scoring actigraphic data. However, parental nonadherence in completing the sleep diary may significantly reduce the amount of available data. The current study examined the agreement between actigraphic data scored with and without a sleep diary to evaluate the impact of not using a sleep diary when studying children's sleep with actigraphy. METHODS: Sixty children (aged 6-10 years; 36 girls) wore an actigraph for three to seven consecutive nights, and mothers were asked to complete a diary of their child's sleep during the same period. Actigraphy data were scored under two conditions (with and without diary) rated independently for each child by two different research assistants, who each scored 50% of the files in each condition. RESULTS: Group-level analyses and intraclass correlations revealed very strong convergence between the two scoring conditions: on all sleep variables (sleep duration, wake duration, and sleep efficiency), average mean differences were very small and intraclass correlations very high. Bland and Altman's (1999) approach allowed for a child-by-child examination of agreement between the two conditions and revealed that, although they cannot be considered interchangeable, the two conditions produce quite minimal differences in the estimation of sleep variables. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that it is possible to use some actigraphy data for which no corresponding diary data are available, although this approach should be used sparingly.