Department of Psychology, "Sapienza," University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Center of Sleep Medicine, Villa Serena Hospital, Città S. Angelo (Pescara), Italy.
Stress Health. 2024 Apr;40(2):e3297. doi: 10.1002/smi.3297. Epub 2023 Jul 26.
Sensory-processing sensitivity (SPS) is a temperamental trait that describes individual differences in sensitivity to environmental stimuli. Previous studies have shown that highly sensitive individuals are more vulnerable to stress and to sleep-related difficulties. In light of this evidence, we hypothesized that SPS is associated with an increase in insomnia symptoms and that this correlation would be mediated by increased perceived stress and sleep reactivity. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a cross-sectional study on 358 adults who completed a survey that included self-report measures of sensitivity, perceived stress, sleep reactivity, and insomnia symptoms. Correlation analysis revealed that SPS was positively related to both stress-related and sleep-related variables. We then conducted a mediation analysis, which revealed that SPS was positively related to insomnia symptoms and that this relationship was fully mediated by sleep reactivity but not mediated at all by perceived stress. The current findings suggest that sleep reactivity may contribute to the development of insomnia symptoms in highly sensitive individuals. Therefore, these results suggests that sleep reactivity should be assessed in highly sensitive individuals and that it could be important to evaluate and further study this relationship.
感觉加工敏感性（SPS）是一种描述个体对环境刺激敏感性差异的气质特征。先前的研究表明，高敏感个体更容易受到压力和与睡眠相关的困难的影响。有鉴于此，我们假设 SPS 与失眠症状的增加有关，而这种相关性是通过增加的感知压力和睡眠反应性来介导的。为了验证这一假设，我们对 358 名成年人进行了横断面研究，他们完成了一项调查，其中包括对敏感性、感知压力、睡眠反应性和失眠症状的自我报告测量。相关分析显示，SPS 与与压力相关和与睡眠相关的变量均呈正相关。然后，我们进行了中介分析，结果表明 SPS 与失眠症状呈正相关，这种关系完全通过睡眠反应性介导，而与感知压力无关。目前的研究结果表明，睡眠反应性可能导致高敏感个体失眠症状的发展。因此，这些结果表明，应该在高敏感个体中评估睡眠反应性，评估和进一步研究这种关系可能很重要。
