XI. sleep and development: Conclusions and future directions

Literature on sleep and child development is growing in novel directions across several disciplines necessitating guiding conceptual principles and methodological tools. First, this volume presents a summary of discussions from an SRCD-sponsored multidisciplinary forum on sleep and development, which includes presentation of key issues and guiding recommendations for research priorities in this fast developing field. Second, enhancing accessibility to child development researchers, state of the science sleep assessment methodologies are presented with a discussion of their advantages and disadvantages. Third, seven empirical studies conducted with "typically" developing infants and children provide examples of relations between sleep and some of the many individual and familial factors that influence and are influenced by sleep. In the presentation of empirical findings, a developmental ecological systems perspective adapted to sleep was espoused to illustrate some of the multiple levels of influence in the study of child sleep and development. Collectively, studies in this volume build significantly on the literature through: (a) illustrating linkages between various sleep parameters (e.g., quality, sleeping arrangements) and other key developmental domains (e.g., attachment, parenting); (b) demonstration of longitudinal relations connecting sleep with development, which is scarce in this field; and (c) utilization of actigraphy-based assessments of sleep duration and quality, which are underutilized in the literature yet important for a more nuanced understanding of sleep and development.