An Analysis of Sleep and Developmental Outcomes in a Large Sample of Children with and without Sleep Impairment Using Bayesian Methods

Abstract

Sleep is critical for cognition and adaptive behavior across development. While sleep patterns change as children age, the importance of sleep on different cognitive and adaptive domains might be more critical at different stages of life, though this is not fully understood. Acute impairment of sleep can have deleterious effects on cognition in children, but what happens to cognition with chronic sleep impairment, such as in Down syndrome (DS)? This study compiled over a decade of sleep and cognition research in typical and atypical development studies from the Memory Development and Disorders Laboratory to evaluate how sleep patterns change over time in children with and without sleep impairments and investigate sleep’s relationship to executive functioning (EF), adaptive functioning (AF), and language outcomes using Bayesian methods. Though results are still preliminary and additional analyses need to be conducted to fully understand the interactions of sleep and cognition, results did show credible differences in sleep across development, with interactions of group and sleep in AF. Language outcomes were inconsistent with previous literature, though analyses are still preliminary. EF findings were consistent with previous literature using similar methods, suggesting sleep does not influence EF in DS using parent-reported methods. AF in DS is improved with improvements in sleep efficiency, with the inverse occurring in typically developing children. Importantly, ethnicity differences were also observed, with higher rates of sleep impairments in non-white ethnic groups than white-non-Hispanic individuals across both developmental groups. Though preliminary, these results demonstrate the importance of sleep on cognition across development while highlighting the need to investigate sleep impairments in ethnic minority groups further.