Project SIESTA
Project SIESTA:
Project SIESTA (Study of Infants’ Emergent Sleep TrAjectories) is a study of parent and child contributions to the development of infant sleep patterns across the infant’s first two years of life. 150 families with 1-month-old infants are being recruited from the Mt. Nittany Medical Center in State College, and from Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. The project has been fully approved by the internal review boards of Penn State, Hershey Medical Center, and Mt. Nittany Medical Center. Data are being gathered from mothers, fathers, and infants at several points across the first two years after birth. These data include measures of mother, father, and infant sleep-wake activity, saliva samples, bedtime and nighttime infant behavior and parent-infant interaction, and parents’ perceptions of themselves, of their infants, and how well or poorly parents and infants are sleeping during the night.
Investigators
The investigators hope to be able to draw links between the patterns of infant sleep and parent-infant functioning during the day. Project SIESTA is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and is under the direction of Dr. Douglas Teti, who is professor of human development in Penn State’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS).
Project SIESTA has several co-investigators from Penn State’s departments of Human Development and Family Studies (Cynthia Stifter, Michael Rovine) and Psychology (Pamela Cole), from Hershey Medical Center’s Department of Pediatrics (Ian Paul), and from the University of California, Davis (Thomas Anders).
Graduate Students
A number of graduate students are also working on the project, including Molly Countermine, Gail Mayer, Bo Ram Kim, Beth Hunt, Alexia Hozella, and Cori Reed. Also working with us is Dr. Brian Crosby, a post-doctoral fellow being funded by the Early Childhood Mental Health training grant. See Project SIESTA personnel.