Objective and Subjective Components of the First-Night Effect in Young Nightmare Sufferers and Healthy Participants

Vargáné Kis, Anna and Szakadát, Sára and Simor, Péter and Gombos, Ferenc and Horváth, Klára and Bódizs, Róbert (2014) Objective and Subjective Components of the First-Night Effect in Young Nightmare Sufferers and Healthy Participants. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 12. pp. 1-12. ISSN 1540-2002 (Print), 1540-2010 (Online)

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Abstract

The first-night effect—marked differences between the first- and the second-night sleep spent in a laboratory—is a widely known phenomenon that accounts for the common practice of excluding the first-night sleep from any polysomnographic analysis. The extent to which the first-night effect is present in a participant, as well as its duration (1 or more nights), might have diagnostic value and should account for different protocols used for distinct patient groups. This study investigated the first-night effect on nightmare sufferers (NM; N D 12) and healthy controls .N D 15/ using both objective (2-night-long polysomnography) and subjective (Groningen Sleep Quality Scale for the 2 nights spent in the laboratory and 1 regular night spent at home) methods. Differences were found in both the objective (sleep efficiency, wakefulness after sleep onset, sleep latency, Stage-1 duration, Stage-2 duration, slow-wave sleep duration, and REM duration) and subjective (self-rating) variables between the 2 nights and the 2 groups, with a more pronounced first-night effect in the case of the NM group. Furthermore, subjective sleep quality was strongly related to polysomnographic variables and did not differ among 1 regular night spent at home and the second night spent in the laboratory. The importance of these results is discussed from a diagnostic point of view.

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