Conducting Sleep Study with Infants

 Michellle Saad, Verrazzano Class of 2022, completed major in Psychology and minor in Biology 

I was a research assistant in the Child Development lab since the Spring 2020 and further developed my research skills through the various projects I was involved in including: Nanit, Heatmaps, and Sleep Movements (my main project).

Sleep Movements is a project that questions how infants developing new motor milestones experience fragmented sleep. We studied infants’ movements during their sleep utilizing a Nanit camera the day before, of, and after a milestone. We then watched nightly videos in order to code for different postural shifts, whole body movements, and overall transitions that created significant wake episodes. This allowed us to understand how an infant's body movements connect with the way an infant learns information that they obtained throughout the day even while sleeping, such as crawling or walking.

I learned how to code data and analyses using different software such as datavyu, databrary, SPSS. To further our knowledge on child development, we consistently kept up to date on current literature relevant to our research. By reading such articles we were continuously informing ourselves on new information and learning how to advance our research. I also contributed my efforts to further enhance the coding manual which was utilized as the core of our project. It helped to provide evidence and supporting data for the work that we did by coding different movements for infants and what that meant overall for the development.

As a part of the Child Development Lab, in 2020 I co-created and co-presented a poster with a lab partner at the Undergraduate Research Conference called “How is Infant Sleep Disrupted Around Crawling Onset?” which aimed to examine the change in number of movements and wake episodes (WEPs) during infants’ sleep surrounding crawling onset. In 2022, I co-presented another poster at the Eastern Psychological Association Conference titled “Infants’ Movements at Night Reflect Crawling and Walking Onset”,  that further examined sleep by looking at both crawling and walking milestones. This finally led to my Capstone and honors thesis that examined “How does movement during sleep change from crawling to walking?”.

The sub-sample of infants involved in this research study were a part of a larger study examining sleep around milestone acquisition. We recruited infants who had not mastered crawling or walking, by contacting the parents of infants around the age that they typically would be expected to crawl or walk. My study looked at crawling and walking-relevant movements during wake episodes (WEPs) that could explain the transition between the two milestones and how sleep was affected overall.

A small portion of my study examined how sleep sacks restricted movement. All in all, I feel that my study was conducted in a strong manner because I had great supportive members of my lab team/readers that gave me insightful feedback on my paper for it to all come together.