Children’s avoidance and habituation towards threat following sleep restriction and increased sleepiness

This project aimed to explore the impact of a sleep restriction for children, and the associated increased sleepiness, on children's approach and avoidance behaviour during a behavioural approach task where they were asked to choose how close to stand to a threat stimulus. The task was repeated at two time points to allow the researchers to explore the impact of restricted sleep and sleepiness on fear avoidance and habituation. Children were assigned to one of three sleep restriction conditions: Sleep restricted at Time one only; Sleep restricted at Time two only, or typical sleep at both time points.