Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
Sleep. 2021 Dec 10;44(12). doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsab179.
Night awakening is common in infancy, and some infants continue to have signaled night awakenings throughout early childhood. However, the influence of signaled night awakening on children's social development is less explored. In the present study, longitudinal associations between signaled night awakening, social information processing, and socio-emotional development were measured within the CHILD-SLEEP birth cohort in two groups formed based on parent-reported night awakenings.
At 8 months, there were 77 infants in the waking group (≥3 awakenings) and 69 infants in the nonwaking group (≤1 awakening). At 8 and 24 months, social information processing was measured as children's attention to neutral and emotional faces, and at 24 months, parent-reported socio-emotional behavior was measured with the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) questionnaire.
The two groups showed different patterns of attention to emotional faces. The waking group had a more pronounced attentional bias to fearful versus happy faces, whereas in the nonwaking group, attention to fearful and happy faces did not differ. In addition, at 24 months, the waking group had more dysregulation problems and lower social competence than the nonwaking group, but no clear differences in internalizing or externalizing problems were found.
Our results contribute to the literature by showing that during the first 2 years of life, signaled night awakening is associated with social information processing and socio-emotional behavior.
夜间觉醒在婴儿期很常见，有些婴儿在整个幼儿期仍会出现有信号的夜间觉醒。然而，有信号的夜间觉醒对儿童社交发展的影响还没有得到充分的探索。在本研究中，我们在 CHILD-SLEEP 出生队列中，根据父母报告的夜间觉醒情况，将婴儿分为两组，测量了有信号的夜间觉醒、社会信息处理与社会情感发展之间的纵向关联。
在 8 个月大时，觉醒组（≥3 次觉醒）有 77 名婴儿，非觉醒组（≤1 次觉醒）有 69 名婴儿。在 8 个月和 24 个月时，测量了社会信息处理能力，表现为儿童对中性和情绪面孔的注意力；在 24 个月时，使用《婴儿-幼儿社交和情感评估》（BITSEA）问卷测量了父母报告的社会情感行为。
两组婴儿对情绪面孔的注意力呈现出不同的模式。觉醒组对恐惧面孔比对快乐面孔表现出更明显的注意力偏向，而非觉醒组对恐惧和快乐面孔的注意力没有差异。此外，在 24 个月时，觉醒组比非觉醒组表现出更多的失调问题和较低的社会能力，但在内部化或外化问题上没有明显差异。
我们的研究结果表明，在生命的头 2 年，有信号的夜间觉醒与社会信息处理和社会情感行为有关，这为文献做出了贡献。
