Sleepless nights, sour moods: daily sleep-irritability links in a pediatric clinical sample.

Background: Sleep, or a lack thereof, is strongly related to mood dysregulation. Although considerable research uses symptom scales to examine this relation, few studies use longitudinal, real-time methods focused on pediatric irritability. This study leveraged an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol, assessing bidirectional associations between momentary irritability symptoms and daily sleep duration in a transdiagnostic pediatric sample enriched for irritability.

Network analysis of ecological momentary assessment identifies frustration as a central node in irritability.

Background: Irritability presents transdiagnostically, commonly occurring with anxiety and other mood symptoms. However, little is known about the temporal and dynamic interplay among irritability-related clinical phenomena. Using a novel network analytic approach with smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA), we examined how irritability and other anxiety and mood symptoms were connected.

Methodological review of caffeine assessment strategies with a focus on adolescents.

Adolescent caffeine use and its implications for developmental changes in sleep and circadian rhythms is under-researched. A majority of adolescents report consuming caffeine and yet the United States has not established federal guidelines for this age group. This widely used stimulant is primarily studied using self-report methodologies; however, there is no standardized method for collecting self-report caffeine data and past studies' findings have limited generalizability and comparability, making it challenging to examine the effects of caffeine use on adolescents' sleep.