Ateka A Contractor1, Danica C Slavish1, Nicole H Weiss2, Ahmad M Alghraibeh3, Ali A Alafnan3, Daniel J Taylor4. 1. Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA. 2. Department of Psychology, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, USA. 3. Department of Psychology, College of Education, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 4. Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity relates to positive memory retrieval difficulties. One variable potentially influencing this relation is sleep difficulties. We examined moderating effects of sleep difficulties (duration and quality) on relations between PTSD severity and count of specific positive memories covarying for age, gender, and depression. METHODS: Participants were an Amazon Mechanical Turk-recruited trauma-exposed community sample of 205 respondents (M age = 35.44; 61.40% women). RESULTS: Moderated regression analyses indicated significant interaction effects between sleep quality (b = 0.03; p = 0.036) and PTSD severity on specific positive memory count. Among individuals reporting better sleep quality, there were negative associations between PTSD severity and specific positive memory count (b = -0.04, SE = 0.02, p = 0.010). Similar results were obtained for PTSD's intrusion and arousal clusters. CONCLUSION: Results support targeting sleep quality and PTSD severity to improve positive memory retrieval in PTSD and memory interventions, and the importance of considering sleep when examining links between PTSD and positive memory retrieval.
OBJECTIVES: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity relates to positive memory retrieval difficulties. One variable potentially influencing this relation is sleep difficulties. We examined moderating effects of sleep difficulties (duration and quality) on relations between PTSD severity and count of specific positive memories covarying for age, gender, and depression. METHODS: Participants were an Amazon Mechanical Turk-recruited trauma-exposed community sample of 205 respondents (M age = 35.44; 61.40% women). RESULTS: Moderated regression analyses indicated significant interaction effects between sleep quality (b = 0.03; p = 0.036) and PTSD severity on specific positive memory count. Among individuals reporting better sleep quality, there were negative associations between PTSD severity and specific positive memory count (b = -0.04, SE = 0.02, p = 0.010). Similar results were obtained for PTSD's intrusion and arousal clusters. CONCLUSION: Results support targeting sleep quality and PTSD severity to improve positive memory retrieval in PTSD and memory interventions, and the importance of considering sleep when examining links between PTSD and positive memory retrieval.