Digital imprints: Media use, sleep, and cognition in infancy
Final Report Abstract
Human infants typically spend most of their time asleep. Recent research has shown that this state is important for aspects of early memory functioning, but its role for further cognitive processes is less clear. In addition, there might be aspects of infants’ everyday experiences that help of hinder sleep’s effects on cognition. Here, we focused on the role of screen media use due to its ubiquity in everyday life. The overall aim of this project was to test causal relations between media use, sleep, and cognition in the second year of life. To do this, we evaluated existing research on the role of screen media for sleep in 0- to 5-year-old children in a review article, and we performed a series of experiments with infants aged between 15 and 24 months. Taken together, both the literature review as well as our experiments failed to provide compelling evidence in support of sweeping claims of disruptive media effects on melatonin secretion, sleep, and cognition in infants. If used at a low dosage at least, as in our study, evening media use might not be a powerful disruptor of circadian rhythm and subsequent sleep. We identified the need for further experimental studies that include objective measurements of sleep, media use, and cognition, and more fine-grained examinations of media use at different dosages and timings. This project also adds to the growing literature on the effects of sleep for infant memory. We found that sleep after a learning event supported memory consolidation. There was no selectivity in sleep-dependent memory processing. Sleep effects occurred uniformly across different learning situations (e.g., learning from screens versus learning from a present person). This project provides insights on relations between screen media use, sleep, and cognition in infants. The first years of life are the foundation for long-term development. Understanding which experiences and conditions support infant development is relevant for developmental scientists and the public alike.
Link to the final report
https://psycharchives.org/en/item/f332307a-9fea-4193-8f96-8c24636f800e
Publications
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Talk to me about it and sleep will help me remember – The influence of caregiver scaffolding on sleep-dependent memory consolidation of televised content. Paper presented at the 52nd Congress of the German Psychological Society, Hildesheim Germany.
Hermesch, N., Konrad, C., Barr, R., Herbert, J.S. & Seehagen, S.
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Media memories: The role of sleep for retention of screen-based information in infants. Poster presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Hermesch, N., Konrad, C., Barr, R., Herbert, J.S. & Seehagen, S.
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Schlaf, Gedächtnis und divergentes Denken im Kleinkindalter. Invited paper presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Austrian Sleep society, Linz, Austria.
Seehagen, S. Konrad, C., Barr, R., Herbert, J. & Hermesch, N.
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Sleep‐dependent memory consolidation of televised content in infants. Journal of Sleep Research, 33(4).
Hermesch, Neele; Konrad, Carolin; Barr, Rachel; Herbert, Jane S. & Seehagen, Sabine
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The effect of caregiver scaffolding and post-encoding sleep on infants’ memory performance of live and video content. Paper presented at the 25. Fachgruppentagung Entwicklungspsychologie, Berlin, Germany.
Hermesch, N., Konrad, C., Barr, R., Herbert, J.S. & Seehagen, S.
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One episode late in the day keeps the good night away? An experimental study on pre-bedtime screen exposure and infant sleep. Paper presented at the XXIV International Congress of Infant Studies, Glasgow, Scotland.
Hermesch, N., Konrad, C., Barr, R., Herbert, J.S. & Seehagen, S.
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Sleep and selective memory consolidation in infants. Poster presented at the 27th Congress of the European Sleep Research Society, Seville, Spain.
Seehagen, S., Konrad, C., Barr, R., Herbert, J. & Hermesch, N.
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Sleep and selective memory consolidation in infants: Exploring the impact of learning contexts. Center for Open Science.
Konrad, Carolin
