The Relationship Between Family Socioeconomic Status and Adolescent Sleep and Diurnal Cortisol

Exposure to parental interpartner conflict in adolescence predicts sleep problems in emerging adulthood

OBJECTIVES

Parental interpartner conflict is a highly prevalent form of family risk that is stressful for adolescents with ramifications for their sleep. Multiple studies have demonstrated that adolescents from high-conflict homes are at risk for sleep problems. Building on this literature, we conducted novel analyses and investigated whether exposure to interpartner conflict in adolescence predicts sleep problems in the subsequent developmental period of emerging adulthood.

METHODS

We used a rigorous four-wave design spanning 8years (collected between 2012-2020). At wave 1, participants were 245 adolescents from diverse backgrounds (M age=15.74years; 67% White/European American, 33% Black/African American; 52% girls). Individuals participated again in their adolescence at wave 2 (M age=16.77) and wave 3 (M age=17.69). Participants returned for wave 4 in emerging adulthood (M age=22.97). Adolescents reported on their parents' interpartner conflict (intense and frequent conflict). Sleep duration (minutes) and quality (efficiency, long wake episodes) were measured using actigraphy.

RESULTS

After controlling for autoregressive effects and several covariates, findings from a structural equation model revealed that greater exposure to parental interpartner conflict in adolescence predicted reduced sleep efficiency and more long wake episodes in emerging adulthood.

CONCLUSIONS

Results build on the literature to consider sleep in the family context and are among the first to illustrate that exposure to parental interpartner conflict in adolescence predicts sleep problems in emerging adulthood. Continued investigations into the antecedents of sleep problems in emerging adulthood may benefit from considering past exposure to family risk.

Socioeconomic factors, sleep timing and duration, and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity in children

Introduction

Reduced sleep health has been consistently linked with increased negative emotion in children. While sleep characteristics have been associated with neural function in adults and adolescents, much less is known about these associations in children while considering socioeconomic context. In this study, we examined the associations among socioeconomic factors, sleep duration and timing, and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the amygdala in children.

Methods

Participants were typically-developing 5- to 9-year-olds from socioeconomically diverse families (61% female; N = 94). Parents reported on children's weekday and weekend bedtimes and wake-up times, which were used to compute sleep duration and midpoint. Analyses focused on amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) connectivity followed by amygdala-whole brain connectivity.

Results

Lower family income-to-needs ratio and parental education were significantly associated with later weekday and weekend sleep timing and shorter weekday sleep duration. Shorter weekday sleep duration was associated with decreased amygdala-ACC and amygdala-insula connectivity. Later weekend sleep midpoint was associated with decreased amygdala-paracingulate cortex and amygdala-postcentral gyrus connectivity. Socioeconomic factors were indirectly associated with connectivity in these circuits via sleep duration and timing.

Discussion

These results suggest that socioeconomic disadvantage may interfere with both sleep duration and timing, in turn possibly altering amygdala connectivity in emotion processing and regulation circuits in children. Effective strategies supporting family economic conditions may have benefits for sleep health and brain development in children.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent sleep behavior

Restorative sleep is a fundamental component of adolescent wellbeing, and the COVID-19 pandemic presented both challenges and opportunities for adolescents' sleep. In this review, we synthesize emergent themes from the growing scientific evidence for the impact of the pandemic on adolescent sleep behavior across different stages of the pandemic and in different locations around the world. We also highlight the ways in which COVID-19 shaped sleep patterns among college students-a subgroup of adolescents transitioning to emerging adulthood that were particularly impacted by the shift to remote learning. Finally, we discuss variations in the impact according to several potential moderating factors in adolescents' lives and point to areas that require additional longitudinal research.

More Competition in Mind, Better Sleep at Night? The Mediating Role of Anxiety between Competitive Attitude and Sleep Quality

Previous studies have suggested that individuals with hypercompetitive attitude and interpersonal insecurity would have a high level of anxiety, and anxiety has been found to strongly impact on sleep quality. However, the associations between competitive attitudes and sleep quality have not been studied until now. The present study aimed to examine whether anxiety mediates the relationship between competitive attitudes and interpersonal relationships with sleep quality. This was a cross-sectional study with a total of 713 college students (age = 20.18 ± 2.16 years old; 78.8% female) recruited online to measure hypercompetitive attitude, personal development competitive attitude, interpersonal security, state anxiety and sleep quality. Path analysis models were conducted in this study. The path analysis models showed that both hypercompetitive attitude and interpersonal security had direct and indirect significant effects on poor sleep quality due to the mediating effect of state anxiety (β = 0.023, 95% bootstrapped CI: 0.005 to 0.047; β = -0.051, 95% bootstrapped CI: -0.099 to -0.010, respectively). However, personal development competitive attitude had only an indirect significant effect, but it had a negative role on poor sleep quality via state anxiety (β = -0.021, 95% bootstrapped CI: -0.042 to -0.008). The current study provided evidence that college students' competitive attitudes would impact sleep quality and highlighted the mediating role of state anxiety. The current findings suggested that individuals shifting their hypercompetitive thinking to concentrate on ability development would benefit their mental health.