Abstract

Infants evolved in the context of close contact (including co-sleeping). Evolutionary context is rarely considered in psychological infant sleep research, and Western sleep researchers make assumptions about what optimal “normal” infant sleep is and how to achieve early, deep, infant sleep consolidation and avoid infant sleep problems. However, an evolutionary and anthropological view of infant sleep as species-typical recognizes that human evolution likely prepared the infant brain for optimal development within its evolutionary context – co-sleeping. Thus, “normal” infant sleep, sleep consolidation, and sleep problems should all be understood within the framework of co-sleeping infants, not the historically new-phenomenon of solitary-sleeping infants. Much work needs to be done in order to understand “normal” infant sleep as species-typical and how adaptive infants are to environments that stray from their evolutionary norm.

摘要

婴儿在密切接触（包括同睡）的背景下进化。在心理婴儿睡眠研究中很少考虑进化背景，西方睡眠研究人员对什么是最佳的“正常”婴儿睡眠以及如何实现早期、深度、婴儿睡眠巩固和避免婴儿睡眠问题做出假设。然而，将婴儿睡眠视为物种典型的进化论和人类学观点认为，人类进化可能已经为婴儿大脑在其进化环境中的最佳发育做好了准备——共同睡眠。因此，“正常”的婴儿睡眠、睡眠巩固和睡眠问题都应该在婴儿共同睡眠的框架内理解，而不是单独睡眠婴儿的历史新现象。