Callum Bettison, 4, with brother Joel, 1. Picture: Dyland Coker
Source: adelaidenow
Callum Bettison with Psychology PhD student Rachael Spooner, who is doing her studies on sleep and child development. Picture: Dylan Coker
Source: adelaidenow
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Callum Bettison with Psychology PhD student Rachael Spooner, who is doing her studies on sleep and child development. Picture: Dylan Coker
Source: adelaidenow
A GOOD night's sleep for baby is not only vital for a parent's sanity, but could be essential for the child's cognitive development.
University of South Australia researchers are undertaking one of the largest, most comprehensive studies ever conducted into links between sleep quality, brain blood flow and development in babies aged one to four years.
Psychology PhD student Rachael Spooner said the years from one to four were pivotal for a child's development and the study was trying to see how sleep disorders - sleep apnoea and snoring as well as behavioural sleep disorders - affected development and whether there was any difference between the development of poor and good sleepers.
Researchers have about 50 participants and are looking to recruit at least 50 more healthy babies and children to determine how much their sleep impacts their language development, visual attention, fine and gross motor skills, as well as their temperament.
"Even in healthy babies, there is such a wide spectrum of sleeping types and lengths, so we're just trying to get a nice big sample of all different types of sleepers to assess their sleep behaviours and development," Ms Spooner said.
"Because there is so little research on this age group, most likely because kids this young can be quite challenging to test and assess, we are trying to understand how factors relating to disrupted sleep can influence childhood development and temperament."
Preliminary data from the study, which so far has focused on children without sleep disorders, has indicated that family stress in the home may affect children's sleep quality.
"What we are unclear about, which we won't be able to fully tease apart until we have a bigger sample of participants, is whether a healthy child is having disrupted sleep because of the family stress, or whether the family stress is caused by the child not sleeping well," Ms Spooner said.
Rebecca Aplin, 39, of Salisbury Plain, registered her sons - Callum, 4, and Joel, 1 - for the study because Callum had been a difficult sleeper, suffering from reflux and separation anxiety.
"I was worried that perhaps the amount of disruption he showed throughout the night may have eventually affected his social and emotional development," she said.
Anyone interested in the study can contact rachael.spooner@unisa.edu.au
liz.walsh@news.com.au
