2-151 - Psychophysiological and Environmental Contributions to Sleep Problems During Early Childhood

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Sleep is essential to health, and when chronically disrupted it leads of both physical and behavioral dysfunction. Although many of the neurobiological characteristics of sleep are understood, significantly less is known about how biological and environmental factors interact to shape sleep early in life. In particular, little is known about the role that the immature autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays in establishing sleep patterns. Likewise, the effect that diverse forms of adversity have on sleep has not been considered extensively during early childhood. The collection of papers in the proposed symposium address several of these gaps in a highly complementary fashion: each paper utilizes similar measures of psychophysiology; each paper examines one or more forms of environmental adversity; and all three papers examine maternal reports of sleep problems during infancy or early childhood. The first paper examines how infant parasympathetic susceptibilities to maternal depression contribute to infants’ sleep problems. The second paper investigates patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic coordination and its association with toddlers’ sleep problems in the context of significant poverty. The third paper investigates the effects on sleep of sympathetic and parasympathetic reactivity using using two distinct cohorts of at-risk preschoolers. The individual and collective implications of these papers will be considered by our discussant, who is an internationally recognized expert on early psychosocial risks to development, including the development of healthy and compromised sleep.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• Jeffrey Measelle, University of Oregon

Discussant

• Ronald Seifer, Brown University

Individual Presentations

• Infant Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia and Maternal Depressive Symptoms Predict Toddler Sleep Problems - Presenting Author: Noa Gueron-Sela, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Cathi Propper, Center for Developmental Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Nicholas Wagner, University of Mayland; Marie Camerota, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Kristin Tully, Center for Developmental Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ginger Moore, Pennsylvania State University

• Infant Sleep Problems and Autonomic Control of the Heart in the Context of Poverty - Presenting Author: Elizabeth Chau Loi, Stanford University; Jennifer C Ablow, University of Oregon; Jeffrey Measelle, University of Oregon

• Autonomic nervous system reactivity moderates the relations between family adversity and sleep problems in preschool-age children - Presenting Author: Abbey Alkon, UCSF School of Nursing; W. Thomas Boyce, UCSF Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry; Brenda Eskenazi, University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health