Poster #50 - Adolescents’ Intraindividual Sleep Variability Mediates Parent-Child Conflict and Adolescents’ Anxiety/Depressive Symptoms

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Insufficient sleep is pervasive for adolescents and could be considered an epidemic due to its adverse impact on adolescent mental and physical health (Owens, 2015; Shochat et al., 2014). One frequently overlooked aspect of adolescents’ insufficient sleep is intraindividual variability (IIV), which quantifies daily fluctuation around one’s mean sleep duration (Bei et al., 2016). Greater IIV has been linked to adolescents’ increased psychological symptoms (Fuligni & Hardaway, 2006). Research also suggests that family environments marked by higher levels of conflict can negatively influence adolescents’ sleep (El-Sheikh & Kelly, 2017; Gregory et al., 2006). Because studies tend to focus on mean levels of sleep and not individual variability, the current study sought to build on this research by examining a mediation model in which parent-child conflict might predict adolescents’ mental health through IIV in adolescents’ daily sleep duration.

A total of 193 adolescent (Mage = 15.7, SD = .94; 54.4% female) and parent (Mage = 47.6, SD = 5.4; 80% female) dyads completed baseline and 7-day sleep diary surveys, and parents provided data from the baseline survey on their sleep-related beliefs. The majority of adolescents and parents identified as Caucasian (71% and 79% respectively), with others identifying as follows: 14% and 14% (respectively) as African American, 8% and 2% (respectively) as multiracial, 3% and 2% (respectively) as Latino/a, 2% and 2% (respectively) as Asian American, and 2% and 1% (respectively) as “other. Parents reported average annual incomes of $81,600 (SD = $27,800), and 17.6% reported incomes equal to or less than $45,000.

To test two separate mediation models, we employed the PROCESS macro (Model 4; Hayes, 2018) for SPSS. Parents reported on global levels of parent-child conflict at baseline using the 11-item Parent-Child Conflict scale (Shelton et al., 1996). To examine the role of bedtime-related arguments directly preceding bedtime, adolescents provided 7-day diary reports of pre-bedtime arguing each evening with a 1-item measure (“How much did you and your parents argue about bedtime or getting ready for bed?”). Adolescents also provided daily 7-day diary reports of sleep duration each morning, from which their sleep duration IIV was derived, in addition to anxiety/depressive symptoms (PHQ-4; Löwe et al., 2010) and duration of afternoon naps each evening. All diary-reported data was averaged across the 7 days, and the models included the child’s age as well as average nighttime sleep and afternoon nap durations as controls.

Results suggested that higher levels of both parent-reported conflict and adolescent-reported pre-bedtime arguing predicted higher sleep duration IIV for adolescents, suggesting that more conflict was associated with greater variability regarding adolescents’ sleep obtained across the week. After controlling for adolescents’ mean levels of sleep duration and napping, higher levels of sleep duration IIV were associated with more anxiety/depressive symptoms. Taken together, these results suggest that variability in adolescents’ sleep durations mediated the association between parent-child conflict and adolescents’ mental health symptoms. The current results provide further evidence that parent-child conflict plays an integral role in adolescent sleep and mental health and should be considered a point of intervention.

Authors

• Jack Peltz, Daemen College
  Presenting Author

• Julie Newman Kingery, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mara Sindoni, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mackenzie Tamblin, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
  Non-Presenting Author

• Abbey Brown, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
  Non-Presenting Author