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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

Quantified Assessment of Infant's Gross Motor Abilities Using a Multisensor Wearable
Published on: May 17, 2024
A time series analysis of the relation between motor skill acquisition and sleep in infancy
Sarah E Berger1, Calandra T Moore2
1Department of Psychology, The College of Staten Island, The City University of New York, 2800 Victory Blvd., 4S-108, SI, NY, 10314, United States; The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, United States.
Abstract:
To systematically examine the relation between motor milestone onset and disruption of night sleep in infancy, three families kept microgenetic, prospective, daily checklist diaries of their infants' motor behavior and sleep (197-313 observation days; 19,000 diary entries). Process control and interrupted time series analyses examined whether deviations from the moving average for night wakings and evening sleep duration were temporally linked to motor skill onset and tested for meaningful differences in individual sleep patterns before and after skill onset. Model assumptions defined skill onset as first day of occurrence or as mastery and moving average windows as 3, 7, or 14 days. Changes in infants' sleep patterns were associated with changing expertise for motor milestones. The temporal relation varied depending on infant and sleep parameter. Intensive longitudinal data collection may increase our understanding of micro-events in infant development.
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