Behavioral Interventions for Infant Sleep Training: Effective and Not Harmful

For infants with frequent nighttime wakening, graduated extinction and other behavioral interventions have been shown to improve sleep, but concerns have been raised that these methods increase infant and parent stress.

Researchers in Australia randomized 43 infants (aged 6–16 months) with sleep problems to one of three groups: graduated extinction (gradually delaying parents' response to infant's cry), bedtime fading (gradually delaying infant's bedtime), or control (basic infant sleep education). The primary outcome was infant sleep during the first 3 months (measured by parent-completed sleep diaries and infant actigraphy); secondary outcomes included infant and parent stress (assessed serially by infant salivary cortisol levels and paren…