Bridget M. Reynolds

Daily Self-Disclosure and Sleep in Couples

OBJECTIVE An emerging literature provides evidence for the association between romantic relationship quality and sleep, an important factor in health and well-being. However, we still know very little about the specific relationship processes that affect sleep behavior. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine how self-disclosure, an important relational process linked to intimacy, relationship satisfaction, and health, is associated with sleep behavior. METHOD As part of a larger study of family processes, wives (n = 46) and husbands (n = 38) from 46 cohabiting families completed 56 days of daily diaries. Spouses completed evening diaries assessing daily self-disclosure, relationship satisfaction, and mood and morning diaries assessing the prior nights sleep. Multilevel modeling was used to explore the effects of both daily variation in and average levels across the 56 days of self-disclosure on sleep. RESULTS Daily variation in self-disclosure predicted sleep outcomes for wives, but not for husbands. On days when wives self-disclosed more to their spouses than their average level, their subjective sleep quality and sleep efficiency that night improved. Furthermore, daily self-disclosure buffered the effect of high negative mood on sleep latency for wives, but not husbands. In contrast, higher average levels of self-disclosure predicted less waking during the night for husbands, but not for wives. CONCLUSION The association between self-disclosure and sleep is one mechanism by which daily relationship functioning may influence health and well-being. Gender may play a role in how self-disclosure is associated with sleep.

Using daily diaries to study family settings, emotions, and health in everyday life

Despite well documented links between family functioning and long-term physical health problems, prior studies using cross-sectional, laboratory, or traditional longitudinal designs are limited in their ability to address everyday family encounters, emotions, biological processes, and physical health. Here, we describe our ongoing study of family settings and upper respiratory infections (URIs) to demonstrate the value of daily diary approaches. Families completed a daily diary assessing social interactions within and outside the family, daily mood, health behaviors, and URIs every day for two months. We collected objective assessments of URI symptoms when parents or children reported they were sick. This paper demonstrates feasibility in terms of compliance and acceptance by families, and describes methods for assessing URI symptoms and episodes.

Measurement Reactivity and Fatigue Effects in Daily Diary Research with Families.

Methodological challenges associated with measurement reactivity and fatigue were addressed using diary data collected from mothers (n = 47), fathers (n = 39), and children (n = 47; 8-13 years) across 56 consecutive days. Demonstrating the feasibility of extended diary studies with families, on-time compliance rates were upward of 90% for all family members, with only minor within-person declines in weekday compliance over time. Multilevel models revealed slight decreases in mother and father daily reports of parent-child conflict and warmth across days, suggesting possible measurement reactivity. Global perceptions of parent-child involvement, measured via a 1-time survey at baseline, moderated change in parent, but not child, diary reports of conflict and warmth. Finally, weakening agreement between mother and child diary reports of conflict and strengthening of positive within-person associations between child-reported negative mood and same-diary ratings of parent-child conflict indicate potential fatigue-related declines in response accuracy. Although generally minimal, observed measurement effects highlight the need for additional methodological research in the study of everyday family life.

Contextual Variations in Negative Mood and State Self-Esteem What Role Do Peers Play?

This study explores the link between peer problems in school and contextual variations in negative mood and state self-esteem over a 5-day period. Fifth-grade children completed measures of mood and state self-esteem while they were at home in the morning and while they were at school each day, allowing for an examination of whether psychological states change from context to context and whether these changes are influenced by types of peer events that children report experiencing at school. Results indicated that children who experienced more peer problems at school showed, on average, a shift toward more negative mood and lowered state self-esteem from mornings at home to afternoons at school during the week of data collection. Peer problems were also associated with higher levels of negative mood at school after controlling for academic problems but no longer predicted state self-esteem in school when academic problems were controlled.

Change in parent-child conflict and the HPA-axis: Where should we be looking and for how long?

OBJECTIVE Salivary cortisol is increasingly used as a longitudinal indicator of change in neuroendocrine regulation and as a predictor of health outcomes in youth. The purpose of this study was to describe which indices of HPA-axis functioning are sensitive to changes in parent-child conflict over a three week period and to explore the time course under which these changes can be measured. METHODS Youth (n=47; ages 8-13) completed daily diaries of their conflict with parents for 56 days. On days 17-18 and 38-39, youth contributed saliva samples upon waking, 30-minutes post-waking, afternoon, and bedtime. We assessed change in average diurnal HPA-axis functioning between day 17-18 and day 38-39 as a function of the slopes of change in parent-child conflict over 3 weeks. RESULTS Increasing parent-child conflict was positively associated with concurrent increases in total cortisol output (AUCg), flattening of the diurnal slope, and increases in cortisol at bedtime, but not with change in the cortisol awakening response (CAR). Further, associations between parent-child conflict and both AUCg and bedtime cortisol were observed with at least 14 days of daily diary reporting, whereas any additional ratings of conflict beyond 3 days of daily diaries did not improve model fit for changes in diurnal slope. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates the within-subject up-regulation of the HPA-axis across three weeks in a healthy sample of youth exposed to natural increases in family conflict. In particular, cortisol at bedtime may be the HPA-axis index that is most sensitive to change over time in parent-child conflict, above and beyond conflict occurring that day. Further, when testing associations between family stressors and diurnal cortisol, the optimal schedule for assessing parent-child conflict varies for different indices of HPA-axis functioning.

I just want to be left alone: Daily overload and marital behavior.

Stressful, busy days have been linked with increases in angry and withdrawn marital behavior. The process by which stressors in 1 domain, such as work, affect an individual’s behavior in another domain, such as the marital relationship, is known as spillover. Using 56 days of daily diary reports in a diverse sample of 47 wives and 39 husbands, this study examined associations between daily experiences of overload and 3 marital behaviors: overt expressions of anger, disregard of the spouse’s needs (“disregard”), and reductions in affection and disclosure (“distancing”). Two potential mechanisms by which daily overload spills over into marital behavior were examined: negative mood and the desire to avoid social interaction. Among husbands, negative mood mediated the association between overload and angry behavior. Associations between overload and wives’ angry behavior, as well as overload and husbands’ and wives’ disregard of their partners’ needs, were mediated by both negative mood and the desire to withdraw socially. Desire to withdraw, but not negative mood, mediated the association between overload and distancing behavior among husbands and wives. In addition, associations between marital satisfaction and spouses’ typical marital behavior, as well as behavioral responses to overload, were examined. Husbands’ and wives’ average levels of expressed anger and disregard, and husbands’ distancing, were associated with lower marital satisfaction in 1 or both partners. Both spouses reported lower marital satisfaction if husbands tended to express marital anger, disregard, or distancing on busy, overloaded days.

A Naturalistic Approach to the Study of Parenting

SYNOPSIS We study parenting within the context of the family—its natural environment—using direct observations and repeated sampling, to describe the real-time unfolding of situations and responses to them. Longitudinal studies attempt to model the long-term impact that different styles of parenting have on the psychological and physical development of offspring. But behavioral, emotional, and biological responses to parenting occur in the moment, with an immediate impact on the child. We are interested in how those short-term responses come to influence developmental and health processes that play out over longer time spans. Our approach, which integrates measures of neuroendocrine and immune system function, has implications for researchers and practitioners.

Daily links between school problems and youth perceptions of interactions with parents: A diary study of school-to-home spillover

This study examined how academic and peer problems at school are linked to family interactions at home on the same day, using eight consecutive weeks of daily diary data collected from early adolescents (60% female; M age = 11.28, SD = 1.50), mothers and fathers in 47 families. On days when children reported more academic problems at school, they, but not their parents, reported less warmth and more conflict with mothers, and more conflict and less time spent around fathers. These effects were partially explained by same-day child reports of higher negative mood. Peer problems were less consistently associated with parent-child interactions over and above the effects of academic problems that day. A one-time measure of parent-child relationship quality moderated several daily associations, such that the same-day link between school problems and child-report of family interactions was stronger among children who were closer to their parents.

Family environments and leukocyte transcriptome indicators of a proinflammatory phenotype in children and parents

High conflict and low warmth in families may contribute to immune cells developing a tendency to respond to threats with exaggerated inflammation that is insensitive to inhibitory signaling. We tested associations between family environments and expression of genes bearing response elements for transcription factors that regulate inflammation: nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) and glucocorticoid receptor. The overall sample (47 families) completed interviews, questionnaires, and 8-week daily diary assessments of conflict and warmth, which were used to create composite family conflict and warmth scores. The diaries assessed upper respiratory infection (URI) symptoms, and URI episodes were clinically verified. Leukocyte RNA was extracted from whole blood samples provided by a subsample of 42 children (8-13 years of age) and 73 parents. In children, higher conflict and lower warmth were related to greater expression of genes bearing response elements for the proinflammatory transcription factor NF-κB, and more severe URI symptoms. In parents, higher conflict and lower warmth were also related to greater NF-κB-associated gene expression. Monocytes and dendritic cells were implicated as primary cellular sources of differential gene expression in the sample. Consistent with existing conceptual frameworks, stressful family environments were related to a proinflammatory phenotype at the level of the circulating leukocyte transcriptome.

Stability of diurnal cortisol measures across days, weeks, and years across middle childhood and early adolescence: Exploring the role of age, pubertal development, and sex

Effective regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) has been linked to numerous health outcomes. Within-person variation in diurnal measures of HPA-axis regulation assessed over days, months, and years can range between 50-73% of total variation. In this study of 59 youth (ages 8-13), we quantified the stability of the cortisol awakening response (CAR), the diurnal slope, and tonic cortisol concentrations at waking and bedtime across 8 days (2 sets of 4 consecutive days separated by 3 weeks), 3 weeks, and 3 years. We then compared the stability of these indices across three key developmental factors: age, pubertal status, and sex. Youth provided 4 saliva samples per day (waking, 30 min post-waking, before dinner, and before bedtime) for 4 consecutive days during the 3rd week of an ongoing 8-week daily diary study. Youth repeated this same sampling procedure 3 weeks and 3 years later. Using multi-level modeling, we computed the amount of variance in diurnal HPA-axis regulation that was accounted for by nesting an individuals diurnal cortisol indices within days, weeks, or years. Across days, diurnal slope was the most stable index, whereas waking cortisol and CAR were the least stable. All indices except bedtime cortisol were similarly stable when measured across weeks, and all indices were uniformly stable when measured across 3 years. Boys, younger participants, and youth earlier in their pubertal development at study enrollment exhibited greater HPA-axis stability overall compared with females and older, more physically mature participants. We conclude that important within- and between-subjects questions can be answered about health and human development by studying HPA-axis regulation, and selection of the index of interest should be determined in part by its psychometric characteristics. To this end, we propose a decision tree to guide study design for research in pediatric samples by longitudinal timeframe and sample characteristics.