Infant sleep disturbance has been treated effectively using an incremental graduated planned ignoring programme at bedtime and throughout the night. In partial replication of a study done by Mindell and Durand (1993), this study looked at whether using this programme at bedtime-only would be effective in the treatment infant sleep disturbance. The assumption was that, following the intervention at bedtime-only, either the infant's and/or the parents behaviour would generalise from that used at bedtime to that used during subsequent night wakings. The generalisati was expected to result in a decrease in the problem behaviours that had previously followed night wakings. The use of the incremental graduated planned ignoring programme at bedtime-only involved parents deciding on a set bedtime and bedtime routine. By the end of the bedtime routine the infant was to be awake and in the cot. Parents were to wake for increasing periods of time before attending to their infant i he/she signalled once left to fall asleep in the cot. Parents were able to treat their infant's night wakings in whatever manner they chose. A single subject, multiple baseline design was used to determine the effectiveness of this programme in treating seven infants and their families. Three measures were calculated (1) initial sleep-on delay, (2) frequency of night wakings, and (3) night sleep-onset delay. Results show that the use of the programme at bedtime-only was effective in treating sleep disturb infants. Only the parents' behaviour was seen to generalise following the interventio No generalisation was noted in the infants behaviour. It was concluded that the success of this bedtime-only intervention, in treating both bedtime and night-time problems, rested on the generalisation in the parents' behavior
