Social Adversity Predictors of Sleep and Role of Sleep Duration in Affect and Inflammation among Adolescents
Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: Nocturnal sleep is pivotal for adolescent health, influencing short-term functioning and long-term neurobiological development, and predicting future mental and physical well-being. While research on individual-level factors affecting adolescent sleep abounds, investigations into social determinants of sleep including social adversity are just emerging, with limited exploration using both self-reported and physiological sleep measures. Further, although sleep duration is one of the most studied pediatric sleep dimensions, the precise biobehavioral mechanisms by which sleep influences health remain unclear. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for targeted interventions to mitigate health disparities necessitating investigations into within-person changes in sleep duration and their impact on biobehavioral pathways to health such as affect and inflammation. This gap may be attributed to insufficient examination of these mechanisms in adolescent sleep interventions as well as the correlational nature of much of the existing literature, or experiments that do not generalize to the daily lives of adolescents. This dissertation aimed to determine how social adversity factors contribute to sleep outcomes among adolescents (Chapter 1), and to employ a randomized, multi-night sleep extension protocol in ecologically valid home settings to examine the causal effect of sleep duration on daily affect (Chapter 2) and inflammation (Chapter 3), the biobehavioral pathways that have wide-ranging implications for social, emotional, and physical development.Healthy adolescents (14-17 years) participated in 1 week of usual sleep. Subsequently, adolescents who were identified as short sleepers (obtaining less than 8 hours of sleep per night), were selected and randomized to either a sleep extension protocol (Van Dyk et al., 2017) or a habitual sleep condition for 2 weeks. In both conditions, the experimental weeks involved establishing fixed bedtime and risetimes to reduce sleep variability. The first aim of the dissertation (i.e., the role of social adversity predictors in sleep outcomes) used the data from the usual sleep week. Aims 2 and 3 of the dissertation (i.e., the role of sleep duration in affect and inflammation) were examined using the experimental part of the project among short-sleeping adolescents. Collectively, the research presented in this dissertation contributes to understanding of the associations between social adversity, sleep patterns, affective experiences, and systemic inflammation among adolescents. These findings emphasize the significance of considering both past and current social adversity in understanding sleep among adolescents. Furthermore, the findings underscore the importance of broadening the focus of sleep research beyond sleep duration.
Author: Mousavi, Avah
Language: English
Topic: Sleep and related disorders
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7034255009