Is attachment security related to sleep-wake regulation? Mothers' reports and objective sleep recordings

This study set out to examine the links between infants' sleep-wake regulation and attachment security. Subjects were 57 healthy, Israeli infant-mother dyads. Mother-child relationship was assessed at 12 months with the Attachment Q-Set (AQS) (Waters & Deane, 1985). Sleep was measured, objectively, with an activity monitor, as well as through maternal reports. The objective sleep records were not associated with either the security or the dependency score. In contrast, mothers' descriptions of the child's sleep problems were associated with the child's dependency placement. This result is in line with the premise that dependency, more than security, modulates the child's transitions to sleep. Since temperament was implicated in both the dependency placement and in the child's sleep pattern, a further disentangling of sleep-attachment-temperament is in order. Future studies of sleep regulation and attachment should address these constructs longitudinally, and include observational measures of attachment and of nighttime parenting, in different child-rearing contexts. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.