If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
Blog Post 71 documents how some researchers falsely assert that extinction or graduated extinction harms the child. Here is another example.
A 2023 paper, by Drs. Kahn, Barnett, and Gradisar, studying 2090 families showed, at age 5 months, that both extinction and graduated helped children sleep better than ‘Parental Presence’. Both extinction and graduated extinction were rated more difficult to implement than parental presence, but both were rated as more helpful, shorter in duration, and quicker to show improvement. Compared to parental presence, both extinction and graduated extinction, infants slept longer, had fewer nighttime awakenings, and fewer parent nighttime crib visits.
Comparing extinction to graduated extinction, infants in the extinction group improved faster, there were fewer nighttime crib visits, and parents rated extinction as more helpful.
“No differences were found between the three groups in parent sleep, parent sleepiness, depression, or parent-infant bonding. Despite concerns regarding the potential harm of these approaches, implementation of these approaches was not linked with negative outcomes, providing additional evidence for their safety and effectiveness.”
A 2023 criticism of this paper by Dr. Pamela S. Douglas and others included:
“Multiple systematic reviews suggest that extinction and graduated extinction does not have an impact on the frequency of infant night waking. Current research provides evidence of adverse impacts of extinction methods on infant well-being such as attachment or cortisol levels.”
A 2023 response to this criticism by Drs. Kahn, Barnett, and Gradisar included:
“We firmly contest two key statements. First, the authors disregard findings of meta-analyses and systematic reviews (including their own) which indicate that [extinction and graduated extinction] enhance infant sleep duration, reduce sleep problems, and improve sleep quality, maternal sleep quality, and maternal mood. Instead, they choose to indicate the one sleep metric for which improvement was not found (i.e., night waking) in two systematic reviews. We believe that such a selective presentation of the evidence presents a biased account of the scientific literature and does not serve the interests of parents seeing to make informed decisions.
Second , the authors make bold claims about the potential harm of extinction and graduated extinction [but do not provide scientific support] of these claims. Direct research on extinction and graduated extinction has thus failed to demonstrate negative impacts on the parent-infant relationship or on child behavior or emotion post-treatment and up to 5 years later. For example, the three published studies on extinction’s and graduated extinction’s potential impact on infant cortisol levels have found no significant changes in cortisol levels following these interventions.
Claims of adverse effects of extinction and graduated extinction thus lack a scientific foundation and can be misleading…The scientific community should strive to inform parents about the range of safe, evidence-based treatments available.”
My comment:
Selective presentation of evidence, that is, citing only those studies that support your point of view, is misleading. Citing studies to support your view that are only indirectly related to, but not actually directly reporting on, a specific question is also misleading. In academia, when this behavior is deliberate, it is called intellectual dishonesty.
