Child & Adolescent Development: Impact of Sleep Disordered Breathing and Working Memory

Running head: CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
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1CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
The child brain comprises of a number of influential and powerful learning methods at its
disposal, even prior to their birth. Infants and young children gain understanding of mechanism
causality from perceptual knowledge. Perceptions or thoughts organizes itself considerably
around a fundamental framework further representing the array of cohesive, well-established,
three-dimensional factors which are further rooted in the range of mechanical associations such
as shoving, blocking and sustain (Guilleminault et al., 2013). Factors related to action is regarded
as significant to the development of descriptive framework when the child develops competence
to influence varied causes and further evaluate the impacts and learning takes place. Children can
be manipulated y determining the stimuli along with the related responses whereby the smaller
attainable challenges aim to instil buoyancy into the minds of a developing child in order to
achieve the performance and further progress to an improved cognitive growth and development
during the stages of early childhood (Marcus et al., 2013). Several observations derived from
biological and behavioural sciences substantiate that inherited capabilities and potential interacts
with experiences since birth through the phases of the whole childhood development procedures
and cognitive growth and development has no exceptions. The paper aims to cast light on a study
whereby a child is undergoing challenges in her school because of the lack of comprehending the
lessons delivered to her in class, and often fall asleep thus leading to incomplete class activities
and lower level of social development among her peers. However, these situations can be
associated with certain psychological factors related to the child’s cognitive and memory
development and resulting to her social and emotional well-being.
Discussion

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Impact of Paediatric Sleep Disordered Breathing and Lethargy
Kyla, an eight years old child as stated in the case study has been experiencing certain
crucial challenges which have been further causing her to lead an exigent life at a very early age.
It has been identified from the given case study that Kyla has been showing tendencies of
sleepiness and lethargy while attending her classes and further leading to certain problems of
being unable to pay adequate attention in class. This disorder can thus be related to paediatric
sleep disordered breathing whereby children experience restless sleep and paradoxical breathing
symptoms (Biggs et al., 2015). As a consequence, children undergo daytime indications which
further include lack of attentiveness, difficulties in concentrating on things along with extreme
level of daytime sleepiness (EDS). Another factor related to Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA)
can further be related to these issues associated with inadequate sleep at nights which is
characterised by the persistent events of upper-airway obstacle and difficulty during sleep that
causes frequent arousals in between sound sleep and interruption of regular ventilation system. It
has further been noted that a wide range of potentially impenetrable aspects further elevates the
levels of risks of cognitive dysfunction among young children with the extensive severity of
OSA (Turnbull, Reid & Morton, 2013). The executive execution and implementation that
includes the mental processes by further facilitating children to execute, concentrate, and
memorize lessons and instructions in an effective manner. These executive operations as well as
self-determining competences are reliant on the functioning memory, cognitive flexibility as well
as self-control. The concept of working memory further necessitates temporary deficiency of
knowledge and information and the competence to precisely influence the information (Fristad &
MacPherson, 2014). For instance, Kyla has been attending her classes on a regular basis but has
been revealing difficulties and challenges while comprehending the class lessons to her teacher

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and parents when being asked. Kyla often reveal indications of her challenges in memorizing the
chapters taught in class as well as the steps of her arithmetic lessons. However, working memory
has been found to draw a parallel with certain rational and intellectual functions in an improved
way in comparison to short-term memory (Zwaigenbaum et al., 2015).
Impact of Sleep Disordered Breathing in Children resulting to Poor Academic
Performance
Verbal functioning memory mutilations has further been related to symptoms of OSA and
may further negotiate young children’s understanding or learning abilities and neurocogntive
advancement. Certain investigations have observed that there has been drastically declined level
of performance on the memory assessments, executive functioning as well as the general
development and intelligence in children of 5-8 years of age with critical symptoms of SDB in
comparison to the asymptomatic children (Owens & Adolescent Sleep Working Group ,2014).
However, other observations have revealed evidences of lower level of general brainpower,
language along with visual-spatial abilities in the consistently sleepiness and snoring of children.
Kyla has been demonstrating similar traits in her class thereby unable to show interest to class
lessons and most significantly to her classmates (Turnbull, Reid & Morton, 2013). Furthermore,
there have been certain other observations based on the functioning memory as well as essential
concentration and attentiveness tasks were assessed in children aged 8-12 years suffering from
OSA and has been contrasted to the complementary healthy determinant functioning (Hunter et
al., 2016). It is significant to note that there has been very less reliability and stability related to
the association between OSA severity and remembrance performance in children. However,
certain observations demonstrated the performance and functioning level of memory based on
the regular psychometric evaluation in children suffering from OSA disorders has been