Journal Article

Examining the Interface of Children's Sleep, Executive Functioning, and Caregiving Relationships: A Plea Against Silos in the Study of Biology, Cognition, and Relationships

Bernier, Annie, Matte-Gagné, Célia, Bouvette-Turcot, Andrée-Anne

2014

Overview

Research in developmental psychology is increasingly showing that children's biology, cognition, and social relationships, which have often been studied separately, are in fact closely tied and influence each other in complex ways. This article summarizes work by our team and others on the connections among young children's sleep, their executive functioning, and the quality of their caregiving relationships. Overall, children exposed to higher-quality parenting perform better on executive tasks and get sleep of higher quality or duration. In turn, sleep relates to subsequent executive performance, while also modulating the links between parenting and child outcomes. We propose directions for future research to address causal relations and to better pinpoint the direction and magnitude of the associations between these areas of child development.

• Publisher: SAGE Publications,Sage Publications,SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subject: Biological and medical sciences / Child / Child development / Child psychiatry / Child psychology / Cognition / Cognition & reasoning / Couple and family / Developmental psychology / Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology / Infants / Language development / Parent child relations / Parenting / Parents & parenting / Personal relationships / Preschool children / Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry / Psychology. Psychophysiology / Quality of care / School age children / Social psychology