Clinical Psychology Department.
Psychol Trauma. 2019 Jan;11(1):114-121. doi: 10.1037/tra0000387. Epub 2018 Jul 2.
There is little research in the current literature regarding contributing factors to nightmares in children. This study aimed to test potentially overlapping predictors of nightmare distress and severity, including anxiety, dissociation, trauma history, vagal tone, and parental processing of emotions.
Sixty parent-child dyads (children ages 6-11) filled out a variety of child-report and parent-observation inventories on nightmare frequency and distress, dissociation, anxiety, and trauma history of the child. Children were monitored on heart rate variability and vagal tone. Both parent and child participated in a discussion of positive and negative life events that were later coded for degree of parent processing of emotional information.
Anxiety, trauma history, dissociation, and baseline vagal tone accounted for 39% of the variance in nightmare distress. Anxiety and dissociation were positive predictors of nightmare distress in the multiple regression. Parent processing variables were weak predictors in the current analysis.
The predictive power of anxiety, dissociation, vagal tone, and trauma history was not entirely due to their overlap, as shown by uniquely significant beta weights in the prediction of distress. Treatment procedures with multiple intervention points targeting physiological and psychological sources of nightmare distress may be warranted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
目前的文献中几乎没有关于儿童噩梦的影响因素的研究。本研究旨在测试噩梦困扰和严重程度的潜在重叠预测因素，包括焦虑、分离、创伤史、迷走神经张力和父母对情绪的处理。
60 对亲子（年龄 6-11 岁）填写了各种儿童报告和父母观察的噩梦频率和困扰、分离、焦虑和儿童创伤史的问卷。儿童的心率变异性和迷走神经张力受到监测。父母和孩子都参与了关于积极和消极生活事件的讨论，这些事件后来根据父母对情绪信息的处理程度进行了编码。
焦虑、创伤史、分离和基线迷走神经张力占噩梦困扰的 39%。焦虑和分离在多元回归中是噩梦困扰的正向预测因子。父母处理变量在当前分析中是较弱的预测因子。
焦虑、分离、迷走神经张力和创伤史的预测能力并非完全归因于它们的重叠，因为在预测困扰方面，β权重具有独特的显著性。针对噩梦困扰的生理和心理来源的具有多个干预点的治疗程序可能是必要的。（选自《心理科学》，2018 年，第 41 卷，第 4 期，第 754-760 页。）
