USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

Treating sleep terrors in children with autism.

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

V. Mark Durand

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2002

ISSN

1098-3007

Abstract

Sleep terrors manifest themselves as a sudden arousal from slow wave sleep accompanied by screaming, crying, and other signs of intense fear. Children with autism spectrum disorders may be more likely to display problems with sleep, and some children experience such sleep difficulties as sleep terrors on a chronic basis. This nighttime disruption can lead to a great deal of concern, as well as disruption in sleep for other family members. In this first study of the treatment of sleep terrors among children with autism, the effectiveness of one behavioral intervention (scheduled awakenings) was evaluated. Scheduled awakenings involved arousing the child from sleep approximately 30 minutes before an expected sleep terror episode. Results through a 12-month follow-up using a multiple baseline across three children indicated that this intervention quickly and durably reduced the frequency of their nighttime difficulties. Scheduled awakenings is a potentially useful nonmedical intervention for chronic sleep terrors among children with autism.

Comments

Abstract only. Full-text article is available only through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in Journal of Positive Behavioral Interventions, 4, 66-72. doi: 10.1177/109830070200400201

Language

en_US

Publisher

Sage

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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