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https://doi.org/10.1080/15402002.2015.1065410

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https://doi.org/10.1080/15402002.2015.1065410

SLEEP, EMOTIONAL, AND ATTENTIONAL REGULATION

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A developmental cascade model of behavioral sleep problems, emotional and attentional self-regulation across early childhood

Kate E. Williams, Donna Berthelsen, Sue Walker

Queensland University of Technology

Jan M. Nicholson

LaTrobe University and Queensland University of Technology

Author Note

Kate E. Williams, School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology; Donna Berthelsen, School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology, Sue Walker, School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology; Jan M. Nicholson, LaTrobe University and Queensland University of Technology.

This paper uses unit record data from Growing Up in Australia, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The study is conducted in partnership between the Department of Social Services (DSS), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to DSS, AIFS or the ABS.

The preparation of this paper was supported by the Excellence in Research in Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network, an initiative funded through the Australian Government’s Collaborative Research Networks (CRN) program. JN was funded through the Roberta Holmes Transition to Contemporary Parenthood Program.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kate Williams, School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4001. E-mail: [email protected]


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Abstract

This paper documents the longitudinal and reciprocal relations among behavioral sleep problems, emotional and attentional self-regulation in a population sample of 4109 children participating in the Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) – Infant Cohort. Maternal reports of children’s sleep problems and self-regulation were collected at five time points from infancy to 8-9 years of age. Longitudinal structural equation modeling supported a developmental cascade model in which sleep problems have a persistent negative effect on emotional regulation, which in turn contributes to ongoing sleep problems and poorer attentional regulation in children over time. Findings suggest that sleep behaviors are a key target for interventions that aim to improve children’s self-regulatory capacities.

Keywords: behavioral sleep problems, early childhood, attentional regulation, emotional regulation, self-regulation


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A developmental cascade model of behavioral sleep problems, emotional and attentional self-regulation across early childhood

Early childhood problems with sleep, and the self-regulation of emotion and attention have each been independently associated with poorer academic and social-emotional outcomes (Blair, Calkins, & Kopp, 2010; Quach, Hiscock, & Wake, 2012); but little is known about the transactional relations among sleep and self-regulation across early childhood. Behavioral sleep problems refers to difficulties such as bedtime resistance and night waking (Turnbull, Reid, & Morton, 2013), as opposed to physical sleep problems such as sleep-disordered breathing (Moore & Bonuck, 2013). At a population level, these problems are common in early childhood and tend to decline as children approach school age (Petit, Touchette, Tremblay, Boivin, & Montplaisir, 2007). However, longitudinal studies indicate that there is considerable individual variation in the degree to which infant sleep problems persist across childhood or new sleep problems emerge (Simard, Nielsen, Tremblay, Boivin, & Montplaisir, 2008).

The need to better understand the interplay among behavioral sleep problems, emotional regulation, and attentional regulation in young children has recently been highlighted (Gruber, 2014; Hansen, Skirbekk, Oerbeck, Wentzel-Larsen, & Kristensen, 2013; Moreau, Rouleau, & Morin, 2013). While sleep problems have been associated with emotional regulation problems and poorer attention at specific time points (O'Callaghan et al., 2010; Spruyt et al., 2008), findings have been inconsistent, and the directionality and persistence of these relations across time remains unknown (Gregory & Sadeh, 2012). Establishing the extent to which early sleep problems are the cause or result (or both) of early problems with emotional and attentional regulation will inform the focus and timing of interventions to prevent childhood disorders related to self-regulatory functioning. This study investigates the longitudinal and reciprocal associations among mother-reported behavioral sleep problems, emotional regulation, and attentional regulation from birth to 8-9 years of age in a large population-representative sample.

Early Childhood Emotional and Attentional Self-Regulation

Self-regulation refers to an individual’s capacity to regulate behaviors, emotions, and cognitions in ways that are beneficial to functioning and adaptive to environmental circumstances (McClelland, Ponitz, Messersmith, & Tominey, 2010). Emotional and attentional self-regulation are specific aspects of self-regulation that underpin children’s social and cognitive learning processes and are predictive of school adjustment and achievement (Eisenberg, Valiente, & Eggum, 2010; Eisenberg, Smith, & Spinrad, 2011; Sawyer et al., 2014; Ursache, Blair, & Raver, 2012). Emotional regulation refers to children’s ability to control their reactions to emotion-inducing events, and attentional regulation refers to children’s persistence in completing tasks and maintaining attention in the face of distractions or interruptions (Blair et al., 2010). Emotional and attentional regulation involve unique, but overlapping processes and are regarded as components of the individual’s broader capacity for self-regulation (Blair et al., 2010; McClelland & Tominey, 2011). For this reason we expect bidirectional relations between these constructs: children who are less able to independently regulate their emotional state may not have the capacity to fully attend to tasks, which in turn, will limit their ability to capitalize on the cognitive and social learning experiences that contribute to the development of self-regulation skills.


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It is important to understand the developmental pathways of emotional and attentional regulation because of their impact on later adaptive functioning. Greater emotional and attentional regulation skills in early childhood have been associated with enhanced development of higher order self-regulatory capacities (e.g., executive functioning; Ursache, Blair, Stifter, & Vogtline, 2013), greater academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007, McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2012), more positive peer relations (Blair et al, 2013; Ramani, Brownell, & Campbell, 2010), and less teacher-child conflict (Fitzpatrick & Pagani, 2013). Conversely, poorer early childhood emotional and attentional regulation skills are associated with a range of poorer childhood and adolescent outcomes including peer relationship problems (Blandon, Calkins, Grimm, Keane, & O’Brien, 2010; Schmid, Schreier, Meyer, & Wolke, 2010), poorer social skills (Sanson et al., 2009), externalizing and internalizing behavior problems (Belsky, Pasco Fearon, & Bell, 2007; Wang, Deater-Deckard, Petrill, & Thompson, 2012) and adolescent risk-taking behaviors (Honomichl & Donnellan, 2012). Emotional and attentional regulation skills also appear to play a protective role, reducing poor academic, social, and mental health outcomes in children exposed to risk factors including negative parenting behaviors (Belsky et al., 2007) , low household resources (Dilworth-Bart, 2012), and poor early academic competency (Hassinger-Das, Jordan, Glutting, Irwin, & Dyson, 2014).

A number of child and environmental factors have been identified as contributing to the development of self-regulation in early childhood. These include having a less reactive temperament (Ursache et al., 2013) and exposure to more positive parenting behaviors (Bernier, Carlson, Deschênes, & Matte-Gagné, 2012) and to environments with higher economic resources (Fitzpatrick, McKinnon, Blair, & Willoughby, 2014). While children’s sleep behaviors are known to be associated with a range of outcomes including behavior problems (Troxel, Trentacosta, Forbes, & Campbell, 2013), mental health (Leahy & Gradisar, 2012), and academic achievement (Bruni et al., 2006), the longitudinal and reciprocal relations among sleep and children’s emotional and attentional regulation skills remain unclear.

Sleep and Early Childhood Self-Regulation

There is emerging evidence that sleep problems in early childhood are related to emotional and attentional regulation, although findings vary by child age and across studies. During infancy, mother-reported frequency of night waking and total time awake at night have been correlated cross-sectionally with more negative emotionality, an indicator of early emotional dysregulation (DeLeon & Karraker, 2007; Spruyt et al., 2008). However in a longitudinal study, sleep problems and children’s emotional self-regulation were stable according to maternal reports at 6 weeks and 24 months and were not associated with each other at either time-point (Hayes, McCoy, Fukumizu, Wellman, & Dipietro, 2011). Infant sleep problems have been concurrently correlated with higher mother-reported attentional regulation in 6-month-olds but lower attentional regulation in 11.5-month-olds (Spruyt et al., 2008). Sleep consolidation at one year of age has been found to predict executive functioning (a higher order self-regulatory construct) at two and four years of age, over and above the contribution of other basic cognitive competencies (Bernier, Beauchamp, Bouvette-Turcot, Carlson, & Carrier, 2013), suggesting an important role for sleep in self-regulatory development.

In the preschool period, persistent patterns of shorter sleep duration have been associated with higher hyperactivity scores (Keefe-Cooperman & Brady-Amoon, 2014) and


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poorer performance on neurodevelopmental tasks reflective of self-regulatory functioning at school entry (Touchette et al., 2007). Nighttime sleep quality has been associated with poorer performance on emotional and behavioral regulation tasks (Vaughn, Elmore-Staton, Shin, & El-Sheikh, 2014). Data from a large population dataset showed that mother-reported sleep problems between 2 and 4 years were associated with the emergence and maintenance of attention problems in adolescents (O'Callaghan et al., 2010). Friedman and colleagues found that while parent-reported sleep problems at 4 years of age did not predict executive functioning at 17 years, steeper declines in sleep problems from 4 to 16 years were associated with higher executive functioning at 17 years (Friedman, Corley, Hewitt, & Wright, 2009). Taken together, these studies suggest that early childhood may be a critical period for addressing sleep problems (Maski & Kothare, 2013) to maximize later developmental outcomes for children. However, it is unclear when relations between sleep problems and emotional and attentional regulation emerge and the direction of influence remains unknown.

Research on sleep problems in middle childhood is more common. A comprehensive meta-analysis found significant associations between sleep quantity and quality and executive function and behavioral problems in children aged 5 to 12 years, but no association with sustained attention (Astill, Van Ijzendoorn, Van der Heijden, & Van Someren, 2012). In a later study involving the experimental manipulation of sleep, restricted sleep duration significantly impaired the immediate emotional and attentional regulation of children aged 6 to 12 years (Vriend et al., 2013). Higher initial levels of sleep problems and steeper increases in problems from 8 to 10 years have also been found to be associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety (El-Sheikh, Bub, Kelly, & Buckhalt, 2012), childhood disorders that are underpinned by disrupted self-regulation (Belsky et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2012).

Early childhood is a period of intense learning and high neural plasticity (Huttenlocher, 2002). It is also a time in which sleep behavior (Acebo et al., 2005) and self-regulation (McClelland et al.,2010) undergo considerable development and children’s sleep problems are often an issue of concern for parents (Hiscock, Canterford, Ukoukmunne, & Wake, 2007). While there is emerging evidence that sleep behaviors may play a role in children’s self-regulatory development, the majority of research has examined school-age children (Astill et al., 2012) with limited attention to early childhood. Previous studies have also tended to focus on clinical populations (Astill et al., 2012), limiting the extent to which findings can be generalized to the whole population.

Most studies have been cross-sectional and correlational in nature (Astill et al., 2012; Ednick et al., 2009) and the directionality of the relations between sleep problems and self-regulation remains unknown. Transactional theories of child development acknowledge mutual exacerbation processes (Lorber & Egeland, 2011). In relation to sleep and self-regulation, it may be that poorer sleep behaviors contribute to poorer self-regulation over time given that sleep deprivation has been associated with higher emotional reactivity and poorer attention (Vriend et al., 2013). In turn, poorer self-regulation skills may exacerbate behavioral sleep problems as children who are unable to independently regulate their emotional and attentional states may have difficulty falling asleep and resettling themselves during the night.

The Current Study

The current study addresses these limitations, using a population-representative sample and five waves of longitudinal data collected from infancy to age 9 years, to test a


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bidirectional model of the associations between sleep and self-regulation. This study seeks to address the question: What are the longitudinal and reciprocal relations among mother-reported behavioral sleep problems, emotional dysregulation, and attentional regulation from infancy to 9 years? Given there is limited empirical work upon which to draw strong conclusions on the directionality of the relations among sleep problems and emotional and attentional regulation across early childhood (Gruber, 2014), we take an exploratory approach using longitudinal structural equation modeling. Specifically, we test an autoregressive cross-lagged model to assess for the presence of developmental cascade effects (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). This allows exploration of longitudinal and reciprocal relations among constructs while accounting for continuity in constructs across time, resulting in an optimal, yet conservative test of developmental processes and directions of effects (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). To our knowledge, no studies to date have examined transactional relations among behavioral sleep problems, emotional and attentional regulation across multiple time-points during early childhood period and beyond.

Method

Study Design

Growing Up In Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) is a large scale, ongoing population study which commenced data collection in 2004 with two cohorts of children. For the current study, we examined the first five waves of data collected biennially for the Infant cohort (N = 5,107) from ages 0-1 to 8-9 years of age. Data collection at each wave included parent- and teacher-completed questionnaires, parent and child computer assisted interviews, and direct child assessments.

Participants

The Infant cohort of LSAC (N = 5,107) were selected through the national Medicare Australia (health insurance) database using a two-stage clustered design. First, 311 postcodes were randomly selected, followed by random selection of children from within postcodes. Stratification was used to ensure that the numbers of children selected were roughly proportionate to the distribution of the child population across each Australian state/territory, and within capital cities and the rest of each state (Soloff, Lawrence, & Johnstone, 2005). The cohort has been found to be broadly representative of the Australian population (Gray & Smart, 2009). Participants were aged birth to 1 year at Wave 1, 2-3 years at Wave 2, 4-5 years at Wave 3, 6-7 years at Wave 4, and 8-9 years at Wave 5.

Participants of LSAC were selected into the current study if they had complete mother-reported sleep problem data for at least three of the five waves used. A total of 4,109 participants met these criteria and were selected for inclusion. The selected sample differed from the excluded sample on a number of demographic characteristics (Table 1). Selected mothers and children were less likely to be Indigenous and have a main language other than English. Selected mothers were also slightly older at the initial data collection time and had a higher socioeconomic position. Selected children were slightly younger at the Wave 2 and Wave 3 data collection times only. These differences between the selected sample and those not included are typical of the patterns of losses experienced in longitudinal studies, and mean that the participants in this study are no longer representative of the full LSAC study and the Australian population.


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Table 1 Sample demographic of selected and excluded participants

Sample

Individual Characteristics Included

(n = 4109)

Excluded

(n = 998) Significance

Child Characteristics % (n) χ2 p

Female 49 (1997) 51 (500) .723 .21

Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 3 (118) 11 (112) 130.20 .00

Main language other than English 9 (355) 20 (197) 102.62 .00

M (SD) F p

Age Wave 1 (months) 8.76 (2.54) 8.83 (2.70) .65 .42

Age Wave 2 (months) 33.87 (2.89) 34.27 (3.17) 9.75 .00

Age Wave 3 (months) 57.55 (2.82) 58.30 (3.34) 22.79 .00

Age Wave 4 (months) 81.85 (3.51) 82.15 (3.58) 1.84 .18

Age Wave 5 (months) 107.15 (3.66) 107.24 (3.67) .149 .70

Parent Characteristics (Wave 1) % (n) χ2 p

Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 2 (72) 9 (92) 144.01 .00

Main language other than English 12 (480) 26 (257) 128.76 .00

M (SD) F p

Socio economic position (SEP) Wave 1* .10 (.96) -.41 (1.03) 219.88 .00

Age Wave 1 (years) 31.39 (5.16) 29.46 (6.53) 100.45 .00

* Socio economic position is an LSAC derived variable that combines measures of household income, parental education and parental occupational prestige. It has an approximate mean of zero and standard deviation of one (Blakemore, Gibbings, Strazdins, 2009)

Measures

Behavioral sleep problems were measured with four mother-reported items from The Infant Sleep Study (Bayer, Hiscock, Hampton, & Wake, 2007). Mothers indicated if their child usually had “problems on four or more nights a week, or more than half the time?”: “difficulty getting off to sleep at night”; “not happy to sleep alone”; “waking during the night”; and “restless sleep” [1 = yes, 0 = no]. These four items were modeled as indicators of the latent variable ‘behavioral sleep problems’ (see results for more details).


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Emotional dysregulation (the opposite of emotional regulation) and attentional regulation were each measured with four mother-reported items using the short form of the Australian Temperament Scales (infant and child versions, Prior, Sanson, & Oberklaid, 1989). Items differed across waves to account for the developmental stages of the children. Emotional dysregulation was assessed at all five waves by items such as: “This child… continues to cry in spite of several minutes of soothing”, “has ‘moody’ off days when he/she is irritable all day”, “when angry is difficult to side-track”. Attentional regulation was assessed at Waves 2 to 5 only (i.e. not during infancy) by items such as: “This child…. goes back to the same activity after a brief interruption”, “likes to complete one task or activity before moving on to the next”, “stays with an activity for a long time”. Mothers responded to items on a 6-point scale: 1 = almost never to, 6 = almost always. These scales have been widely used and are well-established measures of the underlying constructs of emotional and attention regulation across time (Gialamas et al., 2014; Sawyer et al., 2014). For the current study, internal consistency for emotional regulation was adequate at Wave 1 (α = .59) and high at Waves 2 to 5 (α = .69 to .86), and was high at all waves for attentional regulation (α = .75 to .81). Descriptive statistics for all measures are found in Table 3.

Analysis and Missing Data

Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the measurement model of sleep problems at each wave to determine the contribution (loading) of the four sleep items onto an underlying latent variable (‘behavioral sleep problems’) for use in the subsequent longitudinal modelling. This provides a single latent variable at each wave that is adjusted for item-level measurement error. All analyses used the weighted least squares estimator (WLSMV) in MPlus Version 7.2 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998 – 2012) to account for the dichotomous nature of the four indicator items for the behavioral sleep problem construct (Brown, 2006). Confirmatory factor analysis was not conducted for emotional dysregulation and attentional regulation as the items making up these measures have undergone extensive factor analysis (Gialamas et al., 2014; Prior et al., 1989; Sawyer et al., 2014), and are typically represented as summed scores, rather than latent variables.

Longitudinal measurement invariance for mother-reported sleep problems was examined to confirm that the latent variable (behavioral sleep problems) we created measured the same underlying construct at each time point. This indicates that any observed changes over time reflect true changes in sleep behavior, rather than any changes being a result of changing response patterns by mothers. To test for longitudinal measurement invariance, we estimated nested configural (invariant factor structure), metric (invariant factor structure and loadings), and scalar invariant models (invariant factor structure, loadings, and item thresholds). As identical items were used across waves, error covariances of items across the five time points were correlated to minimize bias and misspecification in the estimation.

Two longitudinal structural equation models (SEMs) were constructed to examine the reciprocal and longitudinal relationships between the variables of interest. First, the autoregressive model estimated the cross-sectional correlations among the constructs and the autoregressive paths which represent the continuity of each construct over time. Prior research has found early sleep problems to be persistent across early childhood (Lam, Hiscock, & Wake,. 2003; Wang & Saudino, 2012) and the stability of emotional, and attentional regulation to increase with age (Sanson et al., 2009; Putnam, Rothbart, & Gartstein, 2008). We anticipated that this study would confirm these findings. Next, the transactional model estimated all additional paths from each construct at one wave to each


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other construct at the next wave (cross-lagged paths), while maintaining the paths from the autoregressive model. This exploratory approach to model development is recommended when clear hypotheses on the directionality of relations among variables cannot be developed (Little, 2013). To reduce the chance of Type I error due to our large sample size, we set alpha at ≤ .01 to determine the significance of parameter estimates.

Model fit was assessed using the chi-square statistic, the root mean squared error of

approximation (RMSEA) and the comparative fit index (CFI), interpreted using Hu and Bentler’s (1999) recommendations. Good fit was indicated by RMSEA value <.05 and CFI value >.95. In comparing the fit of alternative models we examined the chi-square difference test where models were nested. As this test is highly sensitive to large sample sizes (Brown, 2006), we also examined the change in CFI value (ΔCFI), where a change of greater than .01 indicates a substantial change in model fit (Cheung & Rensvold, 2002).

Missing data represented up to 18% of cases depending on the wave and the item. We assumed that these data were missing at random (MAR); that is, likely to be related to other variables in the dataset (such as socio-economic status), but not related to the values that would have been provided if the data were not missing (Enders, 2010). Maximum likelihood EM imputation was conducted prior to analysis to ensure that a complete dataset was available for each measurement model (as recommended by Shin, Davison, & Long, 2009). Imputation used all variables in the dataset as well as a range of auxiliary variables including socio-demographic information and Wave 4 and Wave 5 teacher- and parent-reported data on social, emotional, and behavioral problems. The final model was also run with the non-imputed dataset and the results did not differ, thus only the results from the fully imputed dataset are presented here.

Results

Structural Validity of Behavioral Sleep Problems

Results of confirmatory factor analyses for the measurement models for behavioral sleep problems measurement models at each wave and standardized factor loadings for each item are shown in Table 2. The measurement models fit the data well at each wave with all items loading significantly.

Measurement Invariance. The configural model was a good fit to the data, χ2 (120) =

212.314; RMSEA = .01; CFI = .993. The model of metric invariance also showed good fit, χ2 (132) = 294.97; RMSEA = .02; CFI = .987, and did not worsen model fit (ΔCFI =.006). The scalar invariant model showed poor model fit to the data, χ2 (148) = 3192.5003; RMSEA = .07; CFI = .761, and worsened the model fit when compared to the metric invariance model (ΔCFI = .226). Based on modification indices, the item thresholds for three of the four indicators at each wave were allowed to be freely estimated. This partially invariant scalar model fitting the data well, χ2 (136) = 392.995; RMSEA = .02; CFI = .980, and did not worsen model fit compared to the metric invariance model, ΔCFI = -.007. Full scalar invariance is rare, with partial scalar invariance considered acceptable for proceeding to further longitudinal modeling (Byrne, Shavelson, & Muthén, 1989; Donahue, 2006).


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Table 2. Confirmatory factor analysis and standardized factor loadings for measures of behavioural sleep problems

Items Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3 Wave 4 Wave 5 Standardized factor loadings (β) Difficulty getting off to sleep at night .75 .64 .63 .54 .64 Not happy to sleep alone .70 .72 .74 .67 .66 Waking during the night .58 .70 .73 .78 .78 Restless sleep .69 .72 .75 .78 .84 Model fit statistics Chi-square (df) 15.79 (2) 17.36 (2) 12.09 (2) 11.43 (2) 4.56 (2) CFI .99 .99 .99 .99 .99 TLI .97 .97 .98 .97 .99 RMSEA .04 .04 .04 .03 .02

Note: β = standardized factor loading. All loadings are statistically significant at p < .001.


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Table 3 Correlations among the variables and descriptive statistics

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 Sleep probs 0-1 yrs 2 Sleep probs 2-3 yrs .46 3 Sleep probs 4-5 yrs .34 .62 4 Sleep probs 6-7 yrs .28 .48 .67 5 Sleep probs 8-9 yrs .26 .43 .60 .73 6 Emot dysreg 0-1 yrs .47 .22 .14 .10 .12 7 Emot dysreg 2-3 yrs .14 .22 .20 .17 .17 .17 8 Emot dysreg 4-5 yrs .13 .22 .28 .23 .22 .19 .42 9 Emot dysreg 6-7 yrs .12 .21 .23 .29 .28 .17 .34 .61 10 Emot dysreg 8-9 yrs .12 .19 .20 .26 .30 .10 .36 .38 .47 11 Att reg 2-3 yrs -.04 -.12 -.07 -.08 -.12 -.16 -.04 -.20 -.16 -.17 12 Att reg 4-5 yrs -.04 -.12 -.18 -.11 -.11 -.12 -.19 -.27 -.21 -.21 .36 13 Att reg 6-7 yrs (-.03) -.10 -.14 -.17 -.17 -.12 -.19 -.26 -.31 -.26 .34 .59 14 Att reg 8-9 yrs5 -.07 -.15 -.18 -.25 -.25 -.06 -.15 -.25 -.31 -.34 .21 .36 .44

Range LV LV LV LV LV 1 – 6 1 – 6 1 – 6 1 – 6 1 – 5 1 – 6 1 – 6 1 – 6 1 – 5Mean 2.49 2.99 2.58 2.34 2.52 4.27 3.88 4.01 3.33

SD .79 .89 .68 .88 .73 .68 .89 .91 .82 Cronbach’s alpha .58 .78 .58 .59 .86 .75 .72 .68 .79

Sleep probs = Behavioral sleep problems; Emot dysreg = emotional dysregulation; Att reg = attentional regulation. LV = latent variable. All correlations significant at p < .05 except for those in brackets. Cross-sectional correlations among constructs are in bold with those from simple bivariate analyses shown first followed by estimates from the full structural model.


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Descriptive Analyses

Means, standard deviations, reliability coefficients, and zero order correlations among variables were examined and are shown in Table 3. All correlations were in the expected direction. Behavioral sleep problems were positively correlated with emotional dysregulation and negatively correlated with attention regulation both concurrently and across time in almost all instances. The strongest correlations were among each construct measured at different time points, indicating a degree of continuity in these items.

Structural Equation Models: Continuity and Relations among Constructs across Time

The initial autoregressive model included all continuity paths across time for each construct, and the cross-sectional correlations among constructs. This model was a poor fit for the data, (336) = 1956.840; RMSEA = .03; CFI = .927. The modification indices supported the inclusion of cross-lagged paths among constructs as we expected. In the next model we included all potential cross-lagged paths from each construct to each other construct at the following wave. This full transactional model (Figure 1) fit the data well without modification, (316) = 923.835; RMSEA = .02; CFI = .972, and was a significantly better fit than the autoregressive model (ΔCFI > .01; Cheung & Rensvold, 2002). As expected, increasing stability of behavioral sleep problems was evidenced by increasing estimates for the auto-regressive paths over time (Figure 1). Standardized estimates ranged from .51 for the period from infancy to 2-3 years, steadily rising to .77 for the period from 6-7 years to 8-9 years. Stability in emotional dysregulation and attentional regulation also increased up to 6-7 years, but decreased slightly in the period from 6-7 years to 8-9 years.

There were significant positive cross-sectional correlations among sleep problems and emotional dysregulation at all waves except for Wave 5: more sleep problems were associated with heightened concurrent emotional dysregulation from birth to 6-7 years. At age 8-9 years the correlation was in the same direction, but failed to meet our stringent criteria of p < .01 (β = .02, p = .07). More sleep problems were significantly associated with poorer concurrent attentional regulation (negative correlations) at 2-3 years and 6-7 years, but not at the other waves. Non-significant correlations at each of the other waves were in the same direction and at 4-5 years approached significance (β = -.08, p = .02). Emotional dysregulation and attentional regulation were negatively correlated at each time point except 2-3 years.

The cross-lagged paths indicated that behavioral sleep problems were consistently associated with greater emotional dysregulation two years later from infancy (the effect was marginal in the period from 4-5 years to 6-7 years, β = .05, p = .011). In turn, emotional dysregulation was also consistently associated with more behavioral sleep problems two years later (again with a marginal effect in the period from 4-5 years to 6-7 years; β = .04, p = .03). Estimated paths between sleep problems and emotional dysregulation were small, and typically slightly larger for the sleep-driven paths (β = .08 to .14) than the emotional dysregulation-driven paths (β = .06 to .07).


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Figure 1. Estimates from the final transactional model for the relations among behavioral sleep problems (Sleep probs), emotional dysregulation (Emot dysreg) and attentional regulation (Att reg) across early childhood. All estimates are standardized. Cross-lagged paths are shown in bold. All potential paths and cross-sectional correlations were estimated but only paths with significant estimates (p < .01) are shown here. Fit statistics: (316) = 923.835; RMSEA = .02; CFI = .972.

Associations between sleep problems and attentional regulation were not consistent over time. Of the four potential cross-lagged paths from sleep problems to later attentional regulation, only one emerged as statistically significant. More sleep problems at 6-7 years was associated with poorer attentional regulation at 8-9 years (β = -.14). Similarly, only one cross-lagged path from attentional regulation to later sleep problems was significant with higher attentional regulation at 2-3 years associated with fewer sleep problems at 4-5 years (β = -.05). For both the sleep-driven and attentional regulation-driven paths, all other non-significant estimates were in the expected direction. Finally, emotional dysregulation and attentional regulation were reciprocally related across all time-points: higher emotional dysregulation was associated with poorer attentional regulation two years later and the reciprocal was also true.

While the effect sizes for the cross-lagged paths in the final model were small in magnitude, all prior levels of each of the constructs were included in the model. This means that estimates on the cross-lagged paths indicate, for example, the extent to which sleep problems contributed to growth in the self-regulation constructs, over and above the influence of prior levels of self-regulation. That is, behavioral sleep problems consistently predicted an increase in emotional dysregulation (controlling for prior levels) which in turn contributed to


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decreasing attentional regulation (controlling for prior levels). The model accounted for 63% of variance in behavioral sleep problems at 8-9 years, but only 32% of variance in emotional dysregulation, and 29% of variance in attentional regulation suggesting that other variables that exert an influence on self-regulation development were not included in this model.

Comparison of Reciprocal Effects.

We undertook additional analyses to examine the relative strength of the bidirectional relations that were evident between emotional dysregulation and sleep problems in three of the cross-lagged periods. We estimated a series of models which each constrained one pair of cross-lagged paths to be equal. The impact of these equality constraints on model fit allows interpretation of the relative strength of the estimates (Little, 2013). In the period from Wave 1 to Wave 2, these constraints did not impact on model fit, (1) = 1.765, p = .184, indicating that the sleep-driven and emotional dysregulation-driven paths were approximately equal from birth to 2-3 years. In each of the periods from Wave 2 to Wave 3, and from Wave 4 to Wave 5, these equality constraints significantly worsened model fit, (1) = 17.460, p = .000 for the first period, (1) = 8.317, p = .003 for the second period. This confirms that at 2-3 years and at 6-7 years the effects of sleep problems on emotional dysregulation two years later were stronger than the simultaneous effects of emotional dysregulation on sleep problems.

Discussion

Previous studies have examined the correlations among sleep problems and emotional regulation during infancy (Hayes et al., 2011), and the predictive power of early sleep problems in relation to later self-regulation (Bernier et al., 2013; O'Callaghan et al., 2010). The current study is the first to our knowledge, to explore the longitudinal and reciprocal relations among behavioral sleep problems, emotional dysregulation, and attentional regulation from infancy to 9 years. Using a large sample of Australian children, we examined the effects of early childhood behavioral sleep problems on developing emotional and attentional regulation skills during a period of rapid growth and changing environmental influences. The results indicate that behavioral sleep problems make an important contribution to emotional dysregulation across childhood, which in turn affects both attentional regulation abilities and ongoing sleep problems. Interventions aimed at addressing behavioral sleep problems, which appear to become more entrenched as children age, are likely to have a positive impact on children’s emotional and attentional self-regulatory skills.

The Influence of Sleep Problems on Later Self-Regulation

The findings make an important contribution to contemporary and growing evidence that sleep has an important role to play in the development of self-regulation as a whole (Bernier et al., 2013; Bernier et al., 2010). From infancy, behavioral sleep problems predicted emotional dysregulation two years later, over and above the influence of prior levels of emotional dysregulation. This pattern continued at each wave up to 8-9 years, with the exception of the period from 4-5 years to 6-7 years where there was a marginal effect.

Sleep problems did not have the expected direct and negative effect on attentional regulation until 6-7 years when they predicted poorer attentional regulation two years later. However, there was some evidence of longitudinal indirect effects through emotional dysregulation. This pattern of results sheds some light on the to-date inconsistent findings in relation to sleep problems and their negative impact on children’s attentional regulation


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specifically (Astill et al., 2012). The only direct effect of sleep on attentional regulation was found in the period from 6-7 years to 8-9 years. This may reflect the increasing daily demands on children’s cognitive and attentional systems over the early school years, and also the higher expectations of parents in relation to attentional regulation as children reach middle childhood. Future research should investigate the extent to which the direct effects of sleep problems on attentional regulation continue through middle childhood and adolescence.

Influence of Self-Regulation on Later Sleep Problems

Emotional dysregulation and attentional regulation were consistently and reciprocally related across infancy to 9 years, perhaps in part reflecting a degree of neural and construct overlap (McClelland et al., 2010). Higher levels of emotional dysregulation were consistently associated with more sleep problems two years later, with a marginal effect across the 4-5 years to 6-7 years period. These reciprocal paths were generally smaller in magnitude than the sleep-driven paths, further supporting the notion that sleep is a first and key factor to consider in understanding the developmental paths for self-regulation, and a key target for intervention.

The weaker pattern of bidirectional relations among sleep and emotional dysregulation during the period from 4-5 years to 6-7 years is an interesting finding. This period represents the transition to school years for Australian children during which important social emotional and self-regulatory adjustment is required for children to successfully negotiate the demands of the formal classroom environment (Blair et al, 2010). Prior research with the same sample of Australian children suggests that children with persistent sleep problems across 4-5 years to 6-7 years and those with newly arising problems (at 6-7 years) exhibit poorer behavioral and learning outcomes than children without sleep problems and those whose problems resolve over this time (self-regulation was not examined; Quach, Hiscock, Canterford, & Wake, 2009).

In regards to the influence of attentional regulation on sleep problems, one direct, and one indirect relation were found. Increased attentional regulation at 2-3 years was associated with fewer sleep problems two years later. Night-waking tends to peak during the toddler years (Petit et al., 2007), and it is possible that greater attentional regulation enables children to benefit more from any sleep behavior strategies used by parents at this time. Poorer attentional regulation at 4-5 years was associated with increased emotional dysregulation at 6-7 years which was in turn associated with increased behavioral sleep problems two years later. This indirect pathway did not emerge earlier in the model, and more waves of data would be required to investigate whether this indirect influence persists across middle to late childhood. The emergence of this association during the school transition phase may again reflect the additional demands that children face at this time. For example, children with poorer attentional regulation at the critical time of school entry may develop negative self-schemas through peer and teacher feedback, leading to later problems with emotional regulation, which in turn influences sleep problems. Future studies should seek to investigate this proposition in more depth.

The Stability of Sleep Problems and Self-Regulation across Time

The auto-regressive paths documenting stability in sleep problems and self-regulation skills over time yielded results that would be expected given developmental theory and previous research. Sleep problem stability continued to increase to 8-9 years reflecting prior research which suggests that early sleep problems tend to persist into middle childhood (Lam


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et al., 2003; Wang & Saudino, 2012). Stability in emotional dysregulation and attentional regulation was moderate at first, increased to peak between ages 4-5 and 6-7 years, then reduced to a moderate level between 6-7 years and 8-9 years. Stability in these skills over the course of the first seven years has been reported in previous studies (Putnam et al., 2008; Sanson et al., 2009). However, the reduced stability we observed during the later period contrasts with other research which suggests that self-regulation stabilizes from middle childhood when the developmental process of gaining these skills is largely complete (Raffaelli & Crockett, 2005).

Our findings of reduced continuity during late early childhood suggest that there may be the opportunity to disrupt patterns of emotional dysregulation and improve attentional regulation between 6 and 9 years of age. One explanation of the reduced continuity during this time may relate to children’s exposure to the formal school environment. In Australia, most children enter full-time formal school at approximately 5 years of age. By 8-9 years, the influence of the structured school environment and social learning that has occurred there may have exerted an effect on children’s emotional and attentional regulation skills. Many children who entered school with higher maternal ratings of dysregulation may improve in their parent-observed behavior by 9 years. The reverse may also be true. Children whose mothers had not previously identified sleep and self-regulation issues may develop these issues over the course of the early school years as they attempt to adjust to the demands of school and the new peer setting. As all of our measures were maternal report, it is also possible that mother’s perceptions of the degree of their child’s emotional and attentional regulation abilities alters due to reduced time spent with the child. Further research should seek to replicate these findings, to clarify the extent to which they are unique to this population, and to better understand the mechanisms through which this interruption of longitudinal stability occurs.

Explaining Sleep-Driven Paths

There are at least two related mechanisms that may explain our observed longitudinal and reciprocal relations among sleep problems and children’s self-regulation skills. First, very early sleep problems may reflect an underlying, trait-like, perhaps genetic capacity for self-regulation in children. Van den Bergh and Mulder (2012) found that fetuses in the third trimester who exhibited more smooth transitions between active and passive sleep had higher levels of mother-reported effortful control (a self-regulatory construct) at 8-9 years and 14-15 years of age. These authors posit that near-term fetal sleep regulation is indicative of central nervous system maturity and also of the degree of neural plasticity present in the individual which allows them to adapt to the fetal environment. They argue that it is this same neural plasticity that is employed as these children encounter the gene-environment interactions that contribute to development across childhood. Thus, it is because these infants had a higher degree of neural plasticity at near-term gestational age, that they went on to show greater development of self-regulation across their childhood years.

The second explanatory mechanism relates to a neurological and developmental cascade effect. Early sleep problems that do not resolve may result in sub-optimal neurological responses, which over time, may inhibit the development of self-regulatory skills in children. For instance, sleep deprivation has been shown to affect neural connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, resulting in over reactive responses to negative and positive stimuli (Gujar, Yoo, Hu, & Walker, 2011). This pathway may manifest as day time emotional dysregulation in children including internalizing and externalizing


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behavior problems. Children experiencing such emotional dysregulation may be preoccupied with attempts to regulate their emotional system, resulting in limited capacity to focus their attention and benefit from opportunities to extend their attentional regulation.

As our study does not include measures of fetal sleep patterns, we cannot provide direct evidence regarding the neural plasticity trait explanation. However, if the model were to reflect a true trait-like self-regulatory pattern we would have expected to see stronger concurrent correlations among the sleep and self-regulation variables across childhood and a higher stability estimate for emotional dysregulation from infancy to 2-3 years. Rather, we argue that our findings provide support for the developmental cascade model. Emotional dysregulation consistently predicted attentional regulation two years later, even though prior levels of attentional regulation were controlled for. Children who are unable to regulate their own sleep during the night might have lower coping capacity for everyday interactions or frustrations during the day. An increase in dysregulated emotion is likely to lead to a child to not being able to capitalize on opportunities for cognitive and attentional development. Children with higher levels of emotional dysregulation may also find the task of falling asleep independently, and remaining in bed all night challenging, as indicated by the reciprocal relations among sleep problems and emotional dysregulation across time in our model, which are suggestive of a mutual exacerbation process.

Implications and Future Directions

The developmental cascade explanation for the findings presented here suggests that behavioral sleep problems are an important target for early interventions that seek to optimize children’s self-regulatory potential. Mother-reported sleep problems appear to become more entrenched following the infant period, and exert deleterious effects on children’s emotional self-regulation, and in turn, on their attentional regulation. Mother-reported behavioral sleep problems, particularly those that extend beyond the infant years, could be used by practitioners to identify children at risk of poor self-regulation. Early identification and intervention is important because better self-regulatory capacity across early childhood has been established as a protective factor, and poorer regulation as a risk factor in relation to a range of outcomes for children (Kim & Deater‐Deckard, 2011; Ramani et al., 2010). While evidence for the efficacy of interventions to improve emotional regulation in young children is scarce, interventions that address children’s behavioral sleep problems have been associated with improvements in psychosocial functioning (Hiscock, Bayer et al., 2007; Price, Wake, Ukoumunne, & Hiscock, 2012; Quach, Hiscock, Ukoumunne, & Wake, 2011). Additional studies that more precisely measure the specific sleep behaviors that contribute to self-regulatory development will aid in identifying the targets for behavioral sleep interventions.

Sleep education for parents could begin as early as the prenatal period given emerging evidence that sleep deprivation during pregnancy is associated with poorer maternal and fetal outcomes such as post-natal depression and preterm delivery (Chang, Pien, Duntley, & Macones, 2010). Notably, these are also risk factors for poorer self-regulatory development in young children (Scott et al., 2012) and future research efforts should investigate the association between prenatal maternal sleep and infant self-regulatory capacities. Addressing maternal sleep during pregnancy and supporting parents to address non-normative behavioral sleep problems is likely to extend benefits to children’s developing self-regulatory system.


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The school transition period also appears to offer an important opportunity to address behavioral sleep problems. Across this age (4-5 years to 6-7 years), the reciprocal relations among sleep problems and emotional dysregulation were weaker than at other times. During this period, it has been reported that sleep problems resolve for more than 10% of children, and approximately 6% of children experience continuing or new sleep problems (Quach, Hiscock, Canterford, & Wake, 2009). School systems and school transition programs present an ideal population platform upon which to provide universal sleep information to parents and to screen children for further intervention. Our model suggests that from 6-7 years sleep problems become more entrenched and also begin to exert direct deleterious effects on not only emotional regulation but also attentional regulation.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations apparent in this study. First, mother-reported measures were used throughout. For self-regulation, correlations among maternal report and objective measures are often non-significant (Seifer, Sameroff, Dickstein, Schiller, & Hayden, 2004; White, McDermott, Degnan, Henderson, & Fox, 2011). This suggests that either there is significant bias and measurement error present in maternal report of child self-regulation, or that the maternal-report and laboratory measures are tapping different aspects of self-regulation (White et al., 2011). For sleep problems, parent-reported questionnaires tend to correlate well with objective measures of sleep problems (Iwasaki et al., 2010), parent-reported sleep problems predict child-reported emotional problems (Gregory, Rijssdijk, Dahl, McGuffin, & Eley, 2006), and subjective and objective measures of sleep are similarly predictive of child outcomes (Iwasaki et al., 2010). In addition, statisticians have recently found that common-method bias may not routinely inflate relations found among variables as is commonly thought (Conway & Lance, 2010).

Parent report measures are common and appropriate in large population studies such as this where findings can be used as a basis upon which to develop more nuanced research which uses multiple methods of measurement. Nonetheless, results must be interpreted in light of the possible measurement error present in maternal report. Also, while mothers typically observe their child’s behavior in multiple settings, these do not include the important educational context of schools in which children spend much of their time from 5 years of age. Future studies should seek to replicate our findings using teacher report and direct measures of children’s self-regulatory abilities.

In this study, sleep problems and self-regulation were measured every two years. This timing does not adequately reflect the rapid maturational changes that can occur. More frequent measurement of the constructs across the school transition period for example, may yield more nuanced findings and should be a focus of future research.

In a further but related limitation, it is unknown to what extent ongoing behavioral sleep problems as reported by mothers in this study are reflections of the parenting environment including maladaptive responses to initial infant sleep problems. Prior studies have found child sleep problems to reflect parenting practices (Bordeleau, Bernier, & Carrier, 2012) and issues in parental psychosocial functioning (Bernier, Bélanger, Bordeleau, & Carrier, 2012). Future studies should include measures of parental approaches to children’s sleep behavior from an early age to further explore these issues. This would also increase understandings of approaches to take when designing parent education programs in regards to targeting early childhood and school transition sleep problems in children.


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Generalizability of Study Findings

The extent to which the relations demonstrated in our transactional model hold for specific populations of children has potentially important implications. For example, research suggests that children with behavioral disorders such as Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD; Aronen, Lampenius, Fontell, & Petteri, 2014; Gruber, 2014), and psychiatric disorders (Gregory & Sadeh, 2012; Leahy & Gradisar, 2012) experience more sleep problems than non-clinical populations. As ADHD and other clinical disorders are often characterized by problems with self-regulation, it is possible that a different underlying pattern of relations among sleep problems, emotional, and attentional regulation would be evident from an early age. This offers the potential to identify these children early in life, prior to diagnosis. The availability of large longitudinal datasets provides the opportunity to retrospectively examine these paths of sleep and self-regulatory development in children diagnosed in later childhood.

The developmental cascade model identified in the current research may not hold for specific cultural groups in which the socio-cultural norms of child-rearing practices and approaches to managing children’s sleep vary greatly from the context in which this research was conducted (Wang et al., 2013). Finally, caution should be exercised in generalizing the current results, as sample attrition and missing data resulted in an analyzed sample that was no longer fully representative of the population.

In conclusion, this study makes an important contribution to both the sleep medicine and developmental self-regulation literature. The findings suggest that sleep may play a key role in children’s development of self-regulation in the emotional and attentional domains. Addressing sleep problems both in early childhood and across the transition to school period should be an important consideration. This would contribute to ensuring that all children have optimal chances to develop the self-regulatory systems that are vital social-emotional skills underlying wellbeing and achievement.


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