Signaled night awakening and its association with social information processing and socio-emotional development across the first two years

Study Objectives 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. Methods 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 Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) questionnaire. Results The two groups showed different patterns of attention to emotional faces. The waking group had a more pronounced attentional bias to fearful vs. 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. Conclusions Our results contribute to the literature by showing that during the first two years of life, signaled night awakening is associated with social information processing and socio-emotional behavior.

SLEEP PATTERNS

Background: College students experience a number of sleep problems, which1impact academic performance, health, and mood . University students are exposed to pressuresdue to academic demands. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of sleep disorders amongcollege students and look into their sleep patterns and life style. Design: A cross-sectional study.Material & Method: Sample was comprised of 141 medical and non-medical students. Placeand Period of Study: The study was conducted at University of Lahore and period spanned fromDec 2010 to April 2011. Results: The age ranged 18 to 26, with 42.6 to 57.4 Male-female ratios.Both groups were almost similar in use of sleeping pills (medical: 97.2, non-medical: 82.2%).They differed in percentages for studying academic books, listening MP 3 player and late nightparties/hangouts, wherein medical students outnumbered non-medical students almost by half.Both groups differed in their usual time to sleep, medical students who sleep later than 12 pm washigher (66.2%), compared to 46.6% non-medical. In taking day naps (medical: 70.6%, nonmedical:37.0%), awakening due to noise often (medical: 41.2%, non-medical: 30.1%),nightmares during sleep often (medical: 23.5%, non-medical: 19.5%) and sometimes (medical:44.1%, non-medical: 30.1%), difficulty in falling sleep sometimes (medical: 50.0%, non-medical:32.9%), feel sleepiness in the class often (medical: 45.6%, non-medical: 28.8%), feel tired orsleepiness during the day (medical: 36.7%, non-medical: 23.4%). Both groups also differregarding worry about “sleep disturbance to some extent”. (medical:51.4%, nonmedical:35.6%).Conclusions: Our study found that medical students had more disturbed sleeppatterns than the comparing group including delaying sleep time at night, awakening due tonoise, experiencing nightmares, difficulty in falling sleep, feeling sleepiness in the class andduring the day