Does Sleep Matter? Impact on Development and Functioning in Infants.

* Abbreviations: ASQ — : Ages and Stages BISQ — : Brief Infant Sleep BSID-II — : Bayley Scales Infant Development BSID-III — : Bayley Scales Infant Development IIIPennestri and colleagues’1 article “Uninterrupted Infant Sleep, Development, and Maternal Mood” is a glimpse into the question driving much sleep research: does sleep matter? The knee-jerk answer is of course it does. Ask any parent an infant or health care practitioner and the perception is that sleep has to affect development. However, a closer look at the literature provides different answers depending on the study.Pennestri et al1 followed 369 infants at 6 and 12 months, completing the Bayley Scales Infant Development II (BSID-II) at both time points (although it was unclear how many completed the BSID-II at each point). The authors measured the percentage infants that slept consecutively, as an indication sleep consolidation, for 6, 8, or 12 hours on the basis the Self-Administered Questionnaire for the Mother (SQAM). They found no relationship between this measure sleep and concurrent or predictive mental or motor development as well as no relationship with maternal mood.Looking beyond the study at hand, there have been a few studies in which researchers investigated the relationship between sleep and development in young … Address correspondence to Jodi A. Mindell, PhD, Department Psychology, Saint Joseph’s University, 5600 City Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19131. E-mail: jmindell{at}sju.edu