Moderating effects of sleep difficulties on relations between posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and positive memory count.

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.

Excessive reassurance seeking mediates relations between rumination and problematic smartphone use.

Aside from depression and anxiety, less is known about the relationship of problematic smartphone use (PSU) to other psychopathology- related variables. The authors' aim was to test previously neglected variables in relation to PSU: rumination and excessive reassurance seeking behavior (ERSB). The authors recruited 295 college students for a web-based survey of smartphone use frequency, PSU, depression and anxiety, ruminative thinking, and ERSB. The authors tested linear regression and mediation models, assessing rumination and ERSB as mediating associations between depression/anxiety severity with PSU, adjusting for age, sex, and smartphone use frequency. Results demonstrate that ERSB was significantly related to PSU severity, and ERSB mediated the association between rumination and PSU. Furthermore, the combination of rumination and ERSB mediated relations between both depression and anxiety severity with PSU. Results provide evidence for ERSB as an important variable in understanding relationships between psychopathology symptoms and PSU severity among college students.

Worry and anger are associated with latent classes of problematic smartphone use severity among college students.

BACKGROUND: Problematic smartphone use (PSU) is associated with depression and anxiety symptom severity throughout the literature. However, many important psychopathology constructs have not been examined for associations with PSU severity. Worry and anger are two psychopathology constructs receiving little empirical scrutiny in relation to PSU, but theoretically should demonstrate significant relationships. Furthermore, few studies have used person-centered analyses, such as mixture modeling, to analyze possible latent subgroups of individuals based on PSU symptom ratings. METHOD: We conducted a web survey of 300 American college students, using the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version, Penn State Worry Questionnaire-Abbreviated Version, and Dimensions of Anger Reactions-5 Scale. RESULTS: Conducting mixture modeling using latent profile analysis, we found most support for a three-class model of latent groups of individuals based on their PSU item ratings. Adjusting for age and sex, worry and anger scores were significantly higher in the more severe PSU classes. DISCUSSION: Results are discussed in the context of uses and gratifications theory, as well as compensatory internet use theory, in terms of individual differences explaining excessive technology use. LIMITATIONS: Limitations include the non-clinical nature of the sample. CONCLUSIONS: Worry and anger may be helpful constructs in understanding the phenomenology of PSU, and psychological interventions for worry and anger may offset PSU.