Abstract
Negative affect is associated with both high stress and poor sleep, but questions remain about the direction of these associations across time and interactions between stress and sleep, especially in early childhood. The present study examined sleep deficits, family stress, and observed negative affect in a sample of toddlers at 30, 36, and 42 months (N = 504). Negative affect was observed during a parent–child free play task. Sleep was measured via actigraphy. Stress was measured using a cumulative risk index of socioeconomic status, single parent status, household chaos, role overload, parenting hassles, social support, and stressful events. Findings showed few associations between sleep and negative affect, except for toddlers experiencing high levels of family stress. Toddlers experiencing both high stress and poor sleep demonstrated the highest levels of negative affect in the lab at 30 months. Adequate sleep may serve as a protective factor for children in high-stress families.
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The Toddler Development Study has been funded by grants MH099437 from the National Institute of Mental Health and HD073202 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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All data and syntax are publicly available on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/zgv5f/).
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This study was approved by local institutional review boards (Protocol 0,811,000,120) and was performed to ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided informed consent.
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The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00094-2.
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J.S. conceived of the theoretical framework, interpreted statistical analyses, and drafted the manuscript. M.M. performed data analyses and made substantial contributions to manuscript drafts. C.H. and A.S. contributed in critical manuscript revisions. K.R., V.M., and J.B. acquired funding, supervised data collection, and revised the manuscript. J.B. supervised project execution. All authors reviewed and approved of final manuscript.
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Sperber, J.F., McQuillan, M.E., Hoyniak, C.P. et al. Sleep and Negative Affect Across Toddlerhood in the Context of Stress. Affec Sci 3, 370–382 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00094-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00094-2