title: Objective and subjective components of the first-night effect in young nightmare sufferers and healthy participants.
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 = 12) and healthy controls (N = 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.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Sciences Budapest University of Technology and Economics ;
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kis
authors.forename: Sára
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Szakadát
authors.forename: Péter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Simor
authors.forename: Ferenc
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gombos
authors.forename: Klára
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Horváth
authors.forename: Róbert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bódizs
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004325:Dreams / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017286:Polysomnography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology; D057566:Self Report; D012895:Sleep, REM; D013997:Time Factors; D014851:Wakefulness; D055815:Young Adult