Effects of a cognitive intrusion manipulation on the sleep-onset latency of good sleepers
Gross and Borkovec ran an experiment that is unusually direct. Rather than studying people with insomnia, they took good sleepers and gave them something to think about: participants were told they would have to deliver a talk after waking. Those given the intrusive concern took longer to fall asleep than those who were not. The design is what makes it useful, because it demonstrates a cause rather than an association. Poor sleepers have more intrusive thoughts at bedtime, which on its own could mean the sleeplessness is producing the thoughts, and this shows the arrangement running in the other direction: give a normal sleeper something to think about and sleep onset is delayed. It is the evidence behind treating pre-sleep mental arousal as a target, which the later work on writing worries down builds on. Written without an abstract, from the title and the neighbouring research cited here.
Gross and Borkovec ran an experiment that is unusually direct. Rather than studying people with insomnia, they took good sleepers and gave them something to think about: participants were told they would have to deliver a talk after waking. Those given the intrusive concern took longer to fall asleep than those who were not. The design is what makes it useful, because it demonstrates a cause rather than an association. Poor sleepers have more intrusive thoughts at bedtime, which on its own could mean the sleeplessness is producing the thoughts, and this shows the arrangement running in the other direction: give a normal sleeper something to think about and sleep onset is delayed. It is the evidence behind treating pre-sleep mental arousal as a target, which the later work on writing worries down builds on. Written without an abstract, from the title and the neighbouring research cited here.
Written from the the paper's title and the neighbouring sleep research cited here.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Behavior Therapy. Sleep onset latency lengthened by approximately 5 to 12 minutes relative to control.
Where we use it
- Why You Lie Awake at 3am Replaying One Conversation, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7894(82)80054-380054-3)
DOI: 10.1016/S0005-7894(82)80054-3