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Updated: Jan 22, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Adolescents self-reported sleep quality and emotional regulation: a discordant twin study
Emanuela Medda1, Guido Alessandri2, Davide Delfino1
1Registro Nazionale Gemelli, Centro di Riferimento per le Scienze Comportamentali e la Salute Mentale, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Aim:
This study explores the association between sleep quality and emotional regulation, and investigates the genetic and environmental bases of this association.
Methods:
Three-hundred-eighty-two adolescent twins, from the Italian Twin Registry, and their parents filled the Youth Self-Report and Child Behavior Checklist questionnaires, from which the construct of Effortful Control (EC) was derived as a measure of emotional regulation. Twins were identified as "good" or "non-good" sleepers based on answers to the Sleep Disorders Questionnaire. EC levels were compared between same-sex sleep discordant twins.
Results:
A significant association was detected between EC scores and sleep quality. When controlling for shared (fetal or early life) environmental factors and genetic background in the discordant twin analysis, this association weakened in dizygotic twins and disappeared in monozygotic twins.
Conclusion:
Results support the association between sleep quality and EC in adolescence; furthermore, they suggest that sleep quality and emotional regulation may depend on common genetic or environmental factors.
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