Effect of a Power Mobility Intervention on the Sleep Health of Toddlers with Cerebral Palsy.
Bethany M Sloane, Samuel W Logan, John Richmond T Sy and 3 others
No clear link was found between power mobility use and sleep in 12 toddlers with CP.
Most caregivers reported no change or slightly better sleep on days the child used the device. The study was too small to draw conclusions.
Key findings
1Correlations between total days or minutes of Explorer Mini use and the overall sleep score were moderate in size but did not reach significance (r = 0.47, p = 0.13 for days; r = 0.40, p = 0.20 for minutes).
2In open-ended comments, five caregivers noted better sleep on device-use days, two were neutral, and one reported worse sleep (attributed to teething and soreness from sitting).
3No significant difference in sleep score was found between children who used the device more versus less, whether split by total days (p = 0.394) or total minutes (p = 0.394).
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What it does not show
Twelve children is very small; the authors acknowledge the study was likely underpowered to detect a real effect. No control group and no pretest, so it is impossible to tell whether sleep changed because of the device or because of the 12 weeks of weekly home visits, maturation, or other factors. Sleep was measured with three unvalidated Likert items created for this study, not with actigraphy or a standardised sleep diary. Caregivers rated sleep retrospectively and may have been influenced by social desirability or difficulty recalling which nights followed device use. All device use was indoors, so the role of light exposure and physical exertion on varied terrain could not be assessed. No demographic or socioeconomic data were collected, limiting generalisability.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the moderate correlations (r = 0.47, r = 0.40) as evidence that power mobility improves sleep. Neither reached significance (p = 0.13, p = 0.20) in a sample of 12, and the significant group comparisons reported in the paper simply confirm that the groups were sorted correctly on the variable being compared. The one caregiver who reported worse sleep attributed it to teething, not to the device.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →