Poster #227 - Effortful Control Moderates the Relation Between Electronic Media use and Objective Sleep Indicators in Childhood

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Electronic media use before bedtime is associated with poor sleep in children and adolescents, including reduced sleep duration, later onset, and disordered sleep (Hale & Guan, 2015). However, with a few recent exceptions (e.g., Chaput et al., 2014), studies have relied on small samples and parent- or self-reported experiences rather than objective sleep indicators, and none have considered risk or protective factors. One potential factor is Effortful Control (EC), a temperament dimension encompassing attentional control and effortful inhibition or activation of behavior (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Self-regulation and sleep are likely reciprocally related (Bub, Robinson, & Curtis, 2016; Dahl, 1996), and EC may help children maintain consistent schedules and downregulate physiological arousal associated with electronic media.

We examined EC as a moderator of relations between electronic media use and actigraph-measured sleep in a community sample of 488 7-8 year old twins (244 pairs; M = 8.49 years, SD = 0.55; 51.60% female; 57.30% non-Hispanic white). Primary caregiver-report sleep diaries and actigraph data were collected over seven consecutive nights (96.80% of the sample had 6+ nights). Media use was calculated from diaries as the proportion of study days when twins used any of four media types (television, desktop/laptop, smartphone/tablet, and video games) in the hour before bed. Actigraph data was scored using the Sadeh algorithm (Sadeh et al., 1995; Sadeh et al., 1994) and cross-validated using diaries. Sleep parameters included duration (sleep hours, excluding wake periods), efficiency (proportion of time in bed spent asleep), latency (minutes between bedtime and falling asleep) and midpoint (midpoint between bedtime and waking). The mean across all available study nights was used for all parameters except midpoint variability (the standard deviation across study nights). Primary caregivers reported on twins’ EC (mean of attentional focusing, inhibitory control, and activational control scales) using the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (Simonds & Rothbart, 2007) as part of an in-home survey.

Multilevel regression was used in Mplus (robust maximum likelihood estimation) to account for twin dependence. Covariates were age, socioeconomic status, sex, race (non-Hispanic white vs. other race) and vacation vs. school year. Table 1 contains regression results for focal predictors. Figure 1 depicts graphs and regions of significance for significant interactions. Media use and EC were significantly related to sleep duration, but not efficiency, latency, or midpoint variability. However, findings for duration and efficiency are qualified by significant interactions, such that the relation between media use and both sleep duration and efficiency was attenuated when children had higher effortful control.

Our findings extend earlier research on media use to objective measurement of sleep in a large sample of children, but also suggest that media use is most detrimental for children low in EC. However, although EC is protective and potentially malleable, media use before bedtime is a more easily-targeted environmental factor, and likely particularly important for children already most at risk for poor sleep. Findings are limited by concurrent, correlational data. Future directions include examining day level relations between media and sleep, as well as longitudinal relations in pre-adolescence.

Authors

• Sierra Clifford, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Leah D. Doane, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Reagan Styles Breitenstein, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author