Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Relation between Sleep and Learning in Early Development

Dr. Sarah Berger is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She received her PhD from New York University. Dr. Berger was an American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Fellow and a Fulbright Research Scholar. Dr. Berger studies the interaction between cognitive and motor development in infancy, particularly response inhibition and its implications for the allocation of attention in very young children. Recent work, in collaboration with Dr. Regina Harbourne, has shown that attention is best understood by taking into account sensorimotor activity as a context for expertise or a source of attentional demands. This work suggests a set of principles for understanding delayed development which could contribute to identifying features of early intervention. A line of NSF/BSF-funded work, in collaboration with Dr. Anat Scher, has been the first to study the impact of sleep on motor problem solving in infancy. This project has shown that individual differences in the quality of night sleep impact next day’s learning; that napping and night sleep work cummulatively to consolidate new information; and that the timing of a nap relative to learning impacts memory consolidation. In addition, new funding from the NSF, in collaboration with Dr. Harbourne, supports the study of preterm infants, sleep, and problem solving

Dr. Harbourne is an associate professor and teaches pediatrics, research and neuroscience in the Rangos School of Health Sciences at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. Her 40+ years of pediatric experience includes early intervention, school-based, and clinic-based work, as well as teaching continuing education courses related to developmental intervention. Her research and numerous publications focus on early intervention for children with neuromotor dysfunction, and the interaction between motor, visual, and cognitive systems to improve learning and overall development. She currently leads a large multi-site effectiveness trial for early intervention, the START-Play study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. In addition she is funded by NIH for a sponsored intervention trial for infants with cerebral palsy and NSF in collaboration with Sarah Berger, PhD, for the study of preterm infants, sleep and problem solving. Her expertise in early learning, motor development, and intervention for neuromotor disorders, has resulted in over 30 peer-reviewed publications on these topics. She has presented internationally to therapists and researchers, and is known for her translation of research to clinically relevant practice for physical and occupational therapists.

Dr. Anat Scher is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Department of Counseling and Human Development, University of Haifa, Israel. She received her PhD from University of Calgary (Educational Psychology) and conducted Postdoctoral Research at Oxford University. Dr. Scher’s main research interest is sleep and development. Her studies address the interrelations between sleep and other domains, including, temperament, emotional, motor and cognitive development, parent-child interactions, parenting practices and ideologies. One line of research focuses on developmental transitions, such as the onset of crawling, walking, puberty, and the involvement of sleep in these phenomena; complementary questions focus on the role of child and contextual aspects in regulating transitions between awake and asleep states. Sleep in special populations, including prematurity, neuropsychological impairments and children with ASD are also among the topics of on-going research.