In this presentation, Psychology Professor Marsha Weinraub consider how sleep affects infant, child, and adolescent development. After briefly reviewing contemporary theories of sleep and describing how psychological sleep research is conducted, she reports research from Temple’s lab that examines changes in sleep from infancy through adolescence. They have identified two distinctive early developmental trajectories of infant sleep which may have cascading effects on children’s cognitive, social, and emotional lives. She then describes these sleep patterns and the family and child factors that influence them, exploring how these patterns may affect subsequent changes through childhood and adolescence, and she concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of these changing sleep patterns for parenting behaviors and public policy.

Marsha Weinraub is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University and Chairperson of the Psychology Department in the College of Liberal Arts at Temple University. Dr. Weinraub has published widely on the effects of early childcare, single parenting, and maternal employment on parent-child relationships and child development.