Human Development & Family Studies, Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, Lemont Furnace, PA, USA.
J Genet Psychol. 2021 Jul-Aug;182(4):183-204. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2021.1905599. Epub 2021 Mar 30.
Infants evolved in the context of close contact (including co-sleeping). Evolutionary context is rarely considered in psychological infant sleep research, and Western sleep researchers make assumptions about what optimal "normal" infant sleep is and how to achieve early, deep, infant sleep consolidation and avoid infant sleep problems. However, an evolutionary and anthropological view of infant sleep as species-typical recognizes that human evolution likely prepared the infant brain for optimal development within its evolutionary context - co-sleeping. Thus, "normal" infant sleep, sleep consolidation, and sleep problems should all be understood within the framework of co-sleeping infants, not the historically new-phenomenon of solitary-sleeping infants. Much work needs to be done in order to understand "normal" infant sleep as species-typical and how adaptive infants are to environments that stray from their evolutionary norm.
婴儿是在密切接触（包括同睡）的环境中进化的。在心理婴儿睡眠研究中，很少考虑进化背景，西方睡眠研究人员对什么是最佳的“正常”婴儿睡眠以及如何实现早期、深度的婴儿睡眠巩固和避免婴儿睡眠问题做出了假设。然而，从进化和人类学的角度来看，婴儿睡眠是一种具有物种典型性的行为，这表明人类进化可能使婴儿的大脑为在其进化环境——同睡中获得最佳发育做好了准备。因此，“正常”婴儿睡眠、睡眠巩固和睡眠问题都应该在同睡婴儿的框架内理解，而不是在单独睡眠婴儿这一历史上的新现象内理解。为了理解作为物种典型的“正常”婴儿睡眠以及婴儿如何适应偏离其进化常态的环境，还有很多工作要做。
