Describe and Evaluate Lifespan Changes in Sleep

Describe and Evaluate Lifespan changes in Sleep As humans grow from infancy to hoary eon there ar major changes in the amount and kind of relief have a go at itd. Babies eternal rest a lot more than children and adults also mystify divergent peacefulness examples and different stages of calm. They tend to ease just about 16 hours a day. But their quietude is not continuous. By the age of six months a circadian rhythm has become established (one main residual fire up cycle). By the age of give, children have EEG patterns like those of adults but they argon still sleeping more and having more rapid eye movement sleep activity.During childhood, it is not eccentric for children to experience a variety of sleep disorders such as sleep walking and night terrors. During childhood, the need for sleep decrease, but in adolescence, it increases, to about nine of ten hours a night. Circadian rhythms also change so that teenagers feel naturally awake later at night and have mo re difficulty getting up early (a phase delay). braggart(a) sleep is typically about eight hours a night, with 25% REM sleep. Childhood parasomsineas are rarer in adulthood but there is an change magnitude frequency of other sleep disorders, such as insomnia and apnoea.With change magnitude age, the pattern of sleep changes REM sleep decreases to about 20% of total sleep judgment of conviction. Older people also experience a phase board of circadian rhythms feeling sleepier early in the evening and waking up earlier. This approach to psychology is called the developmental approach and is important in spotlight the changes across a persons lifespan. One suggestion as to why babies sleep patterns are so different from those of adults is that their sleep is an adjustive mechanism to make their parents life easier daytime sleep specifys that parents rear end get on with their chores which enhances survival.Infants greater amount of active/REM sleep whitethorn be rationalizee d in terms of the relative immaturity of the brain, and is colligate to the considerable amount of learning taking place. The change of sleep patterns in adolescence may be linked to changes in hormone production at this age. These hormones are primarily released at night and therefore sleep patterns are disturbed leading to sleep deprivation. Hormone changes can also explain the upset to the circadian clock, which has been described as a delayed sleep phase syndrome by Crowley et al. ome researchers go as far as byword that schools should begin later to accommodate the poor attention span of adolescents in the early morning (Wolfson and Carskadon). In adults, the common perception is that a in force(p) nights sleep is related to good health. To test this, Kripke et al surveyed over a million adults and found that there in an change magnitude mortality risk associated with too much sleep. However, this was a correlational theory, and therefore does not account for extraneous va riables. This means that a casual kinship cannot be established.It could be the sae that underlying illness may lead to increased sleep needs and to increased mortality. Reduced sleep in aged age is partly a consequence of physiological changes, but may also be explained in terms of actual problems staying asleep, such as sleep apnoea or medical illnesses. The resulting sleep deficit in old age might explain why older people experience impaired functions, for example, of their alertness. Various treatments can be used to increase sleep at night, including relaxation techniques and melatonin to increase sleepiness.The research in this area shows that sleep patterns vary considerably with age, but these patterns are also influenced by heathenish values as well as lifestyle habits (such as usance of a alcohol, amount of exercise and so on). Tynjala et al found that sleep may also reflect cultural differences/ moreover in Korea, the mean sleep time was about 6. 5 hours (Shin et al) and the mean sleep time in Iran was 7. 5 hours (Glanizadeh et al), both supporting the view that sleep time is shorter in Asia then Europe.