The relationship between internal attentional control and sleep-onset latency in elderly adults

Cognitive hyperactivity has been hypothesized to be one cause of sleep-onset insomnia in elderly adults. This study examined the relationship between one factor that may mediate cognitive hyperactivity--internal attentional control, the ability to direct and control one's attention while processing stimuli from memory--and sleep-onset latency. Twenty-six elderly individuals with self-reported sleep-onset latencies ranging from 5 to 75 min were brought into a sleep laboratory for a multimethod assessment of internal attentional control. Factor analysis was used to develop a composite measure of this construct. Each person then completed three 2-hr afternoon naps while multiple electrophysiological responses were monitored. The results of canonical correlations with the derived composite scores suggested that a significant proportion of the variance in sleep-onset latency in elderly adults was related to internal attentional control.