We are inviting researchers in the field of developmental and learning disabilities to submit papers for consideration in a special issue on sleep and sleep disorders in these populations.
Across our species, in all cultures, children sleep, and their sleep quality reflects the integrity of their neural development as well as their capacity to learn. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of an age-old idea that adequate sleep may be necessary for healthy cognitive and behavioral development. Numerous studies have pointed to poor sleep as an important predictor of a child’s level of executive function and behavior, language development, and school performance. There is also strong evidence that new knowledge is consolidated across sleep periods. More recent work has pointed to the provocative notion that sleep might serve a mechanistic role in how the brain refines networks important for higher-level cognitive function. Despite these advances, research on sleep in developmental disorders is quite rare even though a number of populations show an elevated risk of sleep dysfunction. We hope that this special issue will highlight the diversity and impact of sleep issues across developmental disorders.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Cross- syndrome or disorder studies of sleep’s role in learning and memory function and daytime behavior
- Novel intervention approaches for sleep disorders in developmental disabilities
- Family impacts of sleep disturbance
- Cross-cultural or cross-context studies of sleep in children with developmental disorders
- Studies examining longitudinal changes in sleep in at-risk or developmentally delayed children