A new report on the results from an innovative, experimental study showing inadequate nighttime sleep alters several aspects of children’s emotional health.
Although plenty of correlational research links inadequate sleep with poor emotional health, experimental studies in children are rare. The research team studied 53 children ages 7-11 over more than a week. The children completed an in-lab emotional assessment twice, once after a night of healthy sleep and again after two nights where their sleep was restricted by several hours. In addition to subjective ratings of emotion, researchers collected respiratory sinus arrhythmias and objective facial expressions.
They highlight the implications of their findings for understanding how poor sleep might “spillover” into children’s everyday social and emotional lives. The experience and expression of positive emotions are essential for children’s friendships, healthy social interactions, and effective coping. Their findings might explain why children who sleep less on average have more peer-related problems. Another important finding from the study is that the impact of sleep loss on emotion was not uniform across all children. Specifically, children with greater pre-existing anxiety symptoms showed the most dramatic alterations in emotional responding after sleep restriction.