Article Review
Kristi Carson
Liberty University
PSYC210
March 6 , 2023
th
Article Review
The article by Cheung et al. (2017) explored whether the frequency of touchscreen usage
is associated with sleep in infants aged 6-36 months. I learned that sleep is the dominant activity
in toddlers or infants, especially in cognitive and neurodevelopment. Neural plasticity is most
significant at this age, and sleep is critical to brain development (Cheung et al., 2017, p. 1). I
learned that one contributor to poor sleeping patterns is screen media usage, for example, TV and
video games. Studies discussed in the article show that most children (60%) below seven years
have atypical sleeping anomalies (Cheung et al., 2017, p. 1). Results from the studies showed
that deprived sleep in the early two years of development was associated with problems in
physical, mental, and cognitive development later in life.
The article taught me that although research on the long-term effects of poor sleep has
not been adequately developed, the existing literature shows that negative developmental issues
mirror poor sleeping patterns. Individuals, especially children and adolescents aged 6-19, who
had access to touchscreen media at bedtime, showed detrimental effects on sleep quality (Cheung
et al., 2017, p. 2). For the 6-36 months infants and toddlers, a significant association between
touchscreen use and sleep quality was noted (Cheung et al., 2017, p. 2). I got to learn some of the
factors leading to poor sleep quality, which include displacement of sleeping time for the
children and media contents that might elevate different psychological and physiological
statuses. Bright blue light can lead to melatonin suppression and poor sleep (Cheung et al., 2017,
p. 4).
I have learned that researchers can use different studying methods to study human
development. For example, quantitative and qualitative methods have been used in the study,
where data was collected using interviews and different case studies. Statistical analysis was also
done to show the relationships between the data.
Some of the skills that will assist me in using scholarly articles are the ability to identify
credible sources of information from credible authors, go through the article and associate the
contents with the topic of interest, and interpret the results of the articles.
Reference
Cheung, C. H., Bedford, R., Saez De Urabain, I. R., Karmiloff-Smith, A., &
Smith, T. J. (2017). Daily touchscreen use in infants and toddlers is associated with
reduced sleep and delayed sleep onset. Scientific
Reports 7, (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46104
