An Examination of Clinical High-Risk Status, Sleep Quality, and Verbal Memory in a Community Sample Enriched for Psychosis Risk

Sleep disturbances have been widely endorsed by individuals at heightened risk for developing psychosis. Nascent findings in clinical high-risk (CHR) individuals indicate that sleep disturbances are associated with heightened CHR symptoms over time. Sleep is also vital for neural plasticity and other processes relating to human functioning. Verbal episodic memory is highly susceptible to sleep loss and is also notable for its discriminative utility in predicting likelihood of remission and long-term functional outcomes among CHR individuals. The current study aims to extend current literature on psychosis risk by examining the potential for sleep to moderate the relationship between CHR status and performance on a task targeting verbal episodic memory in a multi-site community sample of non-help-seeking young adults. As an exploratory aim, we also examined whether verbal episodic memory or verbal working memory would mediate the relationship between sleep and three outcome measures of clinical high-risk symptom severity in CHR and non-CHR groups: social functioning, positive symptoms, and negative symptoms. Results indicate that in community participants, episodic verbal memory task performance does not differ between CHR and non-CHR individuals. No interaction between group status and sleep quality in predicting episodic verbal memory task performance was detected. Additionally, direct effects of poor sleep on increased severity of positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and poorer social functioning were detected in non-CHR individuals, whereas poor sleep only had a direct effect on increased negative symptom expression in CHR individuals. These findings highlight sleep as a modifiable treatment target, relevant to early psychosis and broader mental well-being in young adulthood.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Korenic, Stephanie Allison

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ellman, Lauren M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Olino, Thomas
• Murty, Vishnu P.
• Alloy, Lauren B.
• Drabick, Deborah A.
• Giovannetti, Tania

• Clinical psychology
• Psychosis risk
• Sleep
• Verbal memory

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/10701

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/10701