Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2020 Oct;61(10):1150-1159. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13287. Epub 2020 Jul 4.
An abundance of cross-sectional research links inadequate sleep with poor emotional health, but experimental studies in children are rare. Further, the impact of sleep loss is not uniform across individuals and pre-existing anxiety might potentiate the effects of poor sleep on children's emotional functioning.
A sample of 53 children (7-11 years, M = 9.0; 56% female) completed multimodal, assessments in the laboratory when rested and after two nights of sleep restriction (7 and 6 hr in bed, respectively). Sleep was monitored with polysomnography and actigraphy. Subjective reports of affect and arousal, psychophysiological reactivity and regulation, and objective emotional expression were examined during two emotional processing tasks, including one where children were asked to suppress their emotional responses.
After sleep restriction, deleterious alterations were observed in children's affect, emotional arousal, facial expressions, and emotion regulation. These effects were primarily detected in response to positive emotional stimuli. The presence of anxiety symptoms moderated most alterations in emotional processing observed after sleep restriction.
Results suggest inadequate sleep preferentially impacts positive compared to negative emotion in prepubertal children and that pre-existing anxiety symptoms amplify these effects. Implications for children's everyday socioemotional lives and long-term affective risk are highlighted.
大量的横断面研究表明，睡眠不足与情绪健康不佳有关，但针对儿童的实验研究却很少。此外，睡眠不足的影响在个体之间并不统一，而预先存在的焦虑可能会加剧睡眠不佳对儿童情绪功能的影响。
一项针对 53 名儿童（7-11 岁，M=9.0；56%为女性）的多模式研究，在实验室中进行，这些儿童在休息时和两个晚上的睡眠限制后（分别为 7 小时和 6 小时在床上）完成了评估。睡眠通过多导睡眠图和活动记录仪进行监测。在两个情绪处理任务中，包括一个要求儿童抑制情绪反应的任务中，检查了主观的情绪和唤醒报告、心理生理反应和调节，以及客观的情绪表达。
睡眠限制后，儿童的情绪、情绪唤醒、面部表情和情绪调节都出现了有害的变化。这些影响主要是在对积极情绪刺激的反应中检测到的。焦虑症状的存在调节了睡眠限制后观察到的大多数情绪处理改变。
研究结果表明，睡眠不足会优先影响青春期前儿童的积极情绪，而不是消极情绪，而且预先存在的焦虑症状会放大这些影响。强调了这些影响对儿童日常社会情感生活和长期情感风险的意义。
