Hunsley Melissa, Thoman Evelyn B
Biobehavioral Sciences Graduate Degree Program, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-4154, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2002 Jan;40(1):14-22. doi: 10.1002/dev.10009.
Co-sleeping proponents consider the practice to be "natural" and a potential protection against sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); others consider the practice of an infant sleeping in the parents' bed for prolonged periods at night to place an infant at risk for harm or death. For this study, co-sleeping was investigated from a different perspective, that is, as a significant early experience to investigate as it may have implications for the infant's development. The sleep of 101 normal, full-term infants was recorded nonintrusively in the home for 24 hr periods when they were 5 weeks and 6 months old. Infants were assigned to three groups: short-term co-sleepers, long-term co-sleepers, and non-co-sleepers. Their sleep states and wakefulness were compared at the two ages and over age. At 5 weeks and 6 months, the long-term co-sleeping infants differed significantly from the non-co-sleepers on a number of measures: At 5 weeks, they showed more quiet sleep and longer bouts of quiet sleep; and at 6 months, they also showed less active sleep, fewer arousals in active sleep, and less wakefulness. Each of these differences indicates a markedly lower arousal level in the long-term co-sleeping infants. This sleep pattern has been repeatedly found to be an indicator of stress. We infer that a major source of stress for these infants is the experience of sleep disturbance documented for infants when they were co-sleeping. Based on extensive evidence for long-term effects of early stress, we conclude that co-sleeping should have significant implications for infants' neurobehavioral development.
同床睡眠的支持者认为这种做法是“自然的”，并且可能预防婴儿猝死综合征（SIDS）；另一些人则认为婴儿夜间长时间在父母床上睡觉的做法会使婴儿面临受伤或死亡的风险。在本研究中，我们从一个不同的角度对同床睡眠进行了调查，即把它作为一种重要的早期经历来研究，因为它可能会对婴儿的发育产生影响。当101名正常足月婴儿5周和6个月大时，在家中对他们的睡眠进行了24小时的非侵入式记录。婴儿被分为三组：短期同床睡眠者、长期同床睡眠者和非同床睡眠者。比较了他们在这两个年龄以及不同年龄段的睡眠状态和清醒程度。在5周和6个月大时，长期同床睡眠的婴儿在一些指标上与非同床睡眠者有显著差异：在5周时，他们表现出更多的安静睡眠和更长时间的安静睡眠时段；在6个月时，他们还表现出较少的活跃睡眠、活跃睡眠中较少的觉醒以及较少的清醒时间。这些差异中的每一个都表明长期同床睡眠的婴儿的觉醒水平明显较低。这种睡眠模式已被反复发现是压力的一个指标。我们推断这些婴儿压力的一个主要来源是他们同床睡眠时记录到的睡眠干扰经历。基于早期压力长期影响的大量证据，我们得出结论，同床睡眠应该会对婴儿的神经行为发育产生重大影响。
