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Background and Objectives: Cognitive bias to sleep-related information is thought to be a core feature of sleep disturbances. The bias may enhance pre-sleep arousal, such as excessive worry about sleeplessness, which prevents people from initiating normal sleep onset. The present study focused on (a) attention bias toward sleep-related stimuli and (b) difficulty in updating working memory for sleep-related stimuli as two possible mechanisms underlying pre-sleep cognitive arousal., Method: Participants (n = 61, a community sample) completed a dot-probe task (with sleep-related and matched control word stimuli) and a 1-back and 2-back task (with sleep-related and non-sleep-related pictorial stimuli)., Results: For the dot-probe task, the results showed no significant association between pre-sleep cognitive arousal and sleep-related attention bias. However, the results of the 2-back task suggest that pre-sleep arousal is associated with decreased interference by sleep-related stimuli in maintaining non-sleep-related information. That is, individuals with higher levels of pre-sleep arousal are more efficient at processing sleep-related materials., Limitations: The non-clinical nature of the sample may limit the clinical implications of the findings., Conclusions: Although the current results cannot be explained by the extant cognitive theories of insomnia, we offer an alternative explanation based on the idea of worry as mental habit: mental processes that occur frequently (e.g., repetitive thoughts about sleep) require less cognitive resource. Therefore, sleep-related information may be processed easily without consuming much cognitive effort., (Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Excessive focus on the internal self has maladaptive consequences for mental and physical health. Although the emotional functions of self-focus have been well established, no study has examined physiological arousal during the daily experience of self-focused thinking. The present study investigates the association between self-focus and autonomic activity using the experience sampling method with ambulatory monitoring of heart rate variability (HRV). Forty-five students reported the content of their thoughts during their daily activities while their heart rate (HR) was being recorded. Multilevel modeling analyses showed that HRV was lower (and HR was higher) over the sampling day if participants engaged in more self-focus, while HRV increased (and HR decreased) from midday to nighttime if participants did not engage in self-focused thinking. These results suggest that self-focus at night is associated with increased physiological arousal, and leads to inhibition of de-arousal associated with normal sleep processes. Implications for insomnia are discussed., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Although previous research has suggested that presleep negative cognitive activities are associated with poor sleep quality, there is little evidence regarding the association between negative thoughts and sleep in real-life settings. The present study used experience sampling and long-term sleep monitoring with actigraphy to investigate the relationships among negative repetitive thought, mood, and sleep problems. During a 1-week sampling period, 43 undergraduate students recorded their thought content and mood eight times a day at semirandom intervals. In addition to these subjective reports, participants wore actigraphs on their wrists in order to measure sleep parameters. Analyses using multilevel modeling showed that repetitive thought in the evening was significantly associated with longer sleep-onset latency, decreased sleep efficiency, and reduced total sleep time. Furthermore, impaired sleep quality was significantly associated with reduced positive affect the next morning, and decreased positive affect was indirectly associated with increased repetitive thought in the evening. These findings suggest the existence of a self-reinforcing cycle involving repetitive thought, mood, and impaired sleep quality, highlighting the importance of cognitive and emotional factors in enhancement and maintenance of good-quality sleep., (© 2013.)

Biased information processing has been highlighted as a possible vulnerability factor for sleep problems. A theory states that perceived sleeplessness triggers a strong approach motivation (or craving) for sleep, and then activates persistent preoccupation with sleep. However, there is no clear evidence that perceived sleeplessness is associated with such a motivation toward sleep-related information. Thus, we examined the untested idea that people with subjective sleep disturbances would prefer sleep-related topics, using a modified version of the pay-per-view task. In this task, 58 participants were offered two question-type options: the “sleep” option, where participants were asked to answer a question about their sleep, and the “eat” option, where participants needed to answer a question about their eating habits and beliefs. Each option is associated with a variable amount of economic reward and therefore participants sometimes face a conflict between the economic reward and their intrinsic preference for a specific question type. Results showed that people with higher levels of subjective sleep disturbances forgo greater amounts of reward to have an opportunity to answer sleep-related (as opposed to than eating-related) questions. These findings suggest that people who perceive themselves as lacking sleep are highly motivated to engage in sleep-related information processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Repetitive thought has been focused upon as a transdiagnostic risk factor for depression, anxiety, and poor physical health. Among the forms of repetitive thought, rumination and worry are considered to play important roles in the onset and maintenance of insomnia. However, there have been few attempts to clarify the similarities, differences, and interaction between the functions of rumination and worry in sleep problems. Furthermore, no study has investigated the prospective relationships between these two forms of repetitive thought and sleep disturbance. In the present study, we examined the prospective associations between repetitive thought and subjective sleep quality, measured by a self-report questionnaire. A total of 208 undergraduates participated in a 2-wave longitudinal survey with an interval of 3weeks between assessments. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that baseline rumination predicted reduction in the follow-up assessment of subjective sleep quality, controlling for levels of depressive and anxious symptoms. This main effect of rumination was qualified by the levels of worry; for individuals with higher levels of worry, rumination was associated with greater reduction in subjective sleep quality. These results suggest that both rumination and worry have unique associations with sleep and that their interaction is especially important in sleep problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Cognitive models of insomnia highlight the role of biased cognition in sleep‐related information, which is proposed to underlie pre‐sleep worry, which in turn results in both subjective and objective sleep deficits. To test this hypothesis, the current study investigated interpretational bias, which is a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli in a threat‐related (here: insomnia‐related) manner. We specifically hypothesized that interpretational bias would be associated with (a) pre‐sleep worry and (b) poor subjective and objective sleep. Interpretational bias was measured using the ambiguous scenario task, in which participants (n = 76, community sample) were presented with two types of scenarios (insomnia and anxiety related) that could be alternatively interpreted in a neutral manner. Participants additionally completed questionnaires to assess global sleep quality and pre‐sleep worry, which were followed by 1‐week sleep assessments (via diaries and actigraphy) to estimate specific, daily subjective and objective sleep parameters. The results showed that insomnia‐related (but not anxiety‐related) interpretational bias was positively associated with pre‐sleep worry as well as overall sleep quality. However, these associations could be explained by general trait anxiety. We also found no connection to specific subjective or objective parameters of daily sleep, such as sleep onset latency. These findings support the cognitive‐hyperarousal mechanism, where biased cognition (together with trait anxiety) underlies pre‐sleep worry. The association with overall sleep quality, but not with specific, daily subjective or objective sleep parameters, may suggest that interpretational bias is specifically relevant for how individuals judge and describe their sleep quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Misperception of sleep, the underestimation of total sleep time and overestimation of sleep onset latency (SOL) relative to objective measures, is often found in people with sleep disturbances. Theories of insomnia have proposed that perceived sleeplessness triggers excessive intention and effort to sleep, ironically disturbing the normal initiation of sleep. The current study tested this specific association between (mis)perception of sleep and intrinsic motivation to think about sleep.Methods: The sample (n = 74) covered students and community living in Munich and surrounds with ages between 18 and 30 years. We assessed the subjective and objective sleep of participants using a sleep diary and actigraphy. Participants also completed a decision-making task (the pay-per-view task), where they had to decide between thinking about sleep vs. eating. As these options were associated with a variable monetary reward, participants typically experienced a conflict between their preferred topic and the reward for their choice.Results: Multilevel logistic regression analyses showed that participants with greater SOL misperception (i.e., longer subjective relative to objective SOL) forgo a greater reward for the opportunity to think about sleep.Limitations: The non-clinical nature of our sample may limit the implication of the findings for clinical levels of insomnia.Conclusions: Results support the cognitive model of insomnia, suggesting that perception of sleeplessness is associated with higher intrinsic motivation to engage in sleep-related thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]