Research

Circadian Misalignment Experimental Manipulation Study

Dr. Duraccio

Adolescents are at an increased risk for experiencing circadian misalignment, or a misalignment between their preferred sleep timing and their actual sleep patterns. However, minimal research has examined the direct impact of circadian misalignment, especially with using gold-standard methodologies (i.e., dim-light melatonin onset). We aim to take a group of “night owl” adolescents and have them engage in a repeated-measures circadian misalignment experimental paradigm (with order being randomized), where they will engage in a misaligned schedule (1:00am-10:00am) or an aligned schedule (9:00pm-6:00am). Outcomes will include: sleep outcomes (e.g., sleep duration, sleep timing, sleep efficiency), mental health outcomes (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression, suicidality), physical health outcomes (e.g., weight-related behaviors, physical activity, dietary patterns), and neural activation in brain regions associated with executive function, emotion regulation, and reward.

Helping Adolescents Obtain Better Sleep through the Transdiagnostic Intervention for Sleep and Circadian Disorders

Dr. Duraccio

Given that the majority of adolescents are not obtaining adequate sleep, our team aims to test the efficacy of a new sleep intervention (Transdiagnostic Intervention for Sleep and Circadian Disorders) on a group of adolescents who experience a mismatch in their preferred sleep timing with their actual sleep patterns. We will examine the impact that the intervention has on sleep outcomes (e.g., sleep duration, sleep timing, circadian misalignment), mental health outcomes (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression, suicidality), physical health outcomes (e.g., weight-related behaviors, physical activity, dietary patterns), and neural activation in brain regions associated with executive function, emotion regulation, and reward.

Parental Knowledge of School-Aged Sleep Study

Dr. Duraccio

It is unclear whether parents of school-aged children have adequate knowledge of their child’s sleep and about sleep recommendations specific to their child. We will test a community sample of mothers to see whether they 1) have accurate knowledge regarding the sleep expectations and healthy sleep practices for their child, 2) have insight into the current sleep practices of their child, and 3) whether a brief, tailored sleep intervention can improve sleep outcomes (i.e., sleep duration, sleep hygiene, sleep timing) in their children.

Documenting the History of Sleep Psychology

Dr. Kay

To continue to build and grow sleep psychology, work must be done to record its history and uphold its importance as a separate and important part of sleep science and psychology. For this project, we aim to gather the history of sleep psychology by documenting the history of psychologists who do sleep research and sleep researchers who do psychological studies. We have put together a list of prominent sleep psychologist, that we continue to build on through research and interviews. We interview these psychologists in order to collect information about the history of sleep psychology. Before each interview we familiarize ourselves with each psychologist by reading their work and researching their career. As we research information about each sleep psychologist, we collect information that will contribute towards our end goal of compiling the historiography of sleep psychology. During the interviews we ask questions that aim to gain the different perspectives of sleep psychology from those important sleep psychologists. After gathering all the necessary and complete information we will write an article detailing the history of sleep psychology.

Sleep Resilience and Variance in Sleep Valuation

Dr. Kay

Our objective for this study is to continue to build research on how people value sleep, and to understand if people are resilient to sleep. To achieve this, we plan to administer numerous studies with a goal to understand if an in-depth questionnaire is sufficient to show a correlation between how much people value sleep and if that impacts their ability to function well when they experience a lack of adequate sleep. We hope this will provide us with the outcome of future research directions as we continue to explore the relationship between the way people value and resist sleep.

Discovering the Mechanisms Linking Sleep to Suicidality

Dr. Kay and Jolynn Jones