ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2018
Vigilant attention to threat, sleep patterns, and anxiety in peripubertal youth.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of negative events on adolescent sleep quality: the role of negative attention bias and negative emotions.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Sleep fails to depotentiate amygdala-reactivity to negative emotional stimuli in youth with elevated symptoms of anxiety.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Chronic pain recruits hypothalamic dynorphin/kappa opioid receptor signalling to promote wakefulness and vigilance.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2023Article
- Sleep Duration and Internalizing Symptoms in Children.Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry = Journal de l'Academie canadienne de psychiatrie de l'enfant et de l'adolescent · 2022Article
- Sleep Duration and Insomnia in Adolescents Seeking Treatment for Anxiety in Primary Health Care.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Pinpointing mechanisms of a mechanistic treatment: Dissociable roles for overt and covert attentional processes in acute and long-term outcomes following Attention Bias Modification.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundVigilant attention to threat is commonly observed in anxiety, undergoes developmental changes in early adolescence, and has been proposed to interfere with sleep initiation and maintenance. We present one of the first studies to use objective measures to examine associations between vigilant attention to threat and difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep in an early adolescent anxious sample. We also explore the moderating role of development (age, puberty) and sex.
methodsParticipants were 66 peripubertal youth (ages 9-14) with a primary anxiety disorder and 24 healthy control subjects. A dot-probe task was used to assess attentional bias to fearful relative to neutral face stimuli. Eye-tracking indexed selective attentional bias to threat, and reaction time bias indexed action readiness to threat. Sleep was assessed via actigraphy (e.g. sleep onset delay, wake after sleep onset, etc.), parent report (Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire), and child report (Sleep Self-Report). The Pediatric Anxiety Rating Scale assessed anxiety severity.
resultsEye-tracking initial threat fixation bias (β = .33, p = .001) and threat dwell time bias (β = .22, p = .041) were positively associated with sleep onset latency. Reaction time bias was positively associated with wake after sleep onset (β = .24, p = .026) and parent-reported sleep disturbance (β = .25, p = .019). Anxiety (severity, diagnosis) was not associated with these outcomes. Sex (β = -.32, p = .036) moderated the relation between initial threat fixation bias and sleep onset latency, with a positive association for males (p = .005), but not for females (p = .289). Age and pubertal status did not moderate effects.
conclusionsVigilant attention to threat is related to longer sleep onset and reduced sleep maintenance. These associations are not stronger in early adolescents with anxiety. Implications for early intervention or prevention that targets vigilant attention to threat to impact sleep disturbance, and vice versa, are discussed.
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