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Objective: Dissociative absorption is a tendency to become absorbed in imagination or in an external stimulus (movie, book) to the point of obliviousness to one's surroundings and reduced self‐awareness. It has been hypothesized to play a role in the maintenance of obsessive‐compulsive (OC) symptoms. However, because absorption is a trait of reduced attentional control, a possible confound may be attention‐deficit/hyperactivity (ADHD) symptoms, which have been reported to be comorbid with obsessive‐compulsive disorder (OCD). This study aimed to validate dissociative absorption as unique from ADHD symptoms as well as from mind‐wandering and to show that it has incremental predictive value over these constructs in predicting OC symptoms. Design: Cross‐sectional. Method: Three‐hundred and three undergraduate students completed online questionnaires, which were analysed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Results: As hypothesized, dissociative absorption emerged as a unique construct, separate from ADHD, and mind‐wandering (whereas the latter two were not completely separate from each other). Additionally, absorption was uniquely associated with OC symptoms, with a moderate‐to‐strong effect size, demonstrating incremental predictive value over the other constructs. Conclusions: Attentional deficits and mind‐wandering cannot account for the association between absorption and OC symptoms. Future research should explore whether reports of comorbidity between ADHD and OC symptoms may be inflated due to misdiagnosis of absorption tendencies as ADHD. Practitioner points: Dissociative absorption is a personality tendency that may interact with obsessive‐compulsive symptoms, and thus, it may deserve clinical attention when treating obsessive‐compulsive disorder (OCD)Dissociative absorption might bring about an unnecessary diagnosis of attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in individuals with obsessive‐compulsive symptoms, and thus, it should be screened for.This study was based on a non‐clinical sample; future studies should replicate the findings among samples with an OCD diagnosis.This study is based on self‐report questionnaires; future studies should use clinician interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Dissociative experiences are associated with several psychopathological symptoms and are a hindrance to therapeutic gain. Depersonalization-derealization (DEP-DER) is positively associated with stress and anxiety, while absorption and imaginative involvement (ABS), a tendency for total, immersed attention, is commonly referred to asnonpathological dissociation, although it is positively associated with obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. Previous studies in the field have been mainly cross-sectional. The present study aimed to examine these associations rigorously and attempted to determine directionality between dissociation and distress.Method: The current study employed both variable-centered (cross-sectional) and person-centered (longitudinal, within-subjects) analyses of the associations of DEP-DER and ABS with distress. Undergraduate students (N = 184) completed trait questionnaires on dissociation, stress, anxiety, depression, and OC symptoms, andn = 78 also completed questionnaires assessing the same constructs daily for 14 days. Multiple regression and multilevel modeling analyses were conducted.Results: In the cross-sectional phase, DEP-DER was uniquely positively related to anxiety and OC symptoms, and ABS was uniquely positively related to OC symptoms. In the daily diary phase, increases in DEP-DER were related to increases in anxiety, depression, OC symptoms, and stress, while increases in ABS were related to increases in OC symptoms and stress. In addition, time-lag analysis showed that ABS tended to temporally precede OC.Conclusions: ABS foretold increases in OC symptoms, at least in this nonclinical sample. Future studies on clinical samples should explore whether ABS should be referred to as “nonpathological” and its possible role in the development or maintenance of clinical-level OCD. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sleep patterns and temperament in the first year of life are closely related. However, research utilizing objective, rather than subjective measurements of sleep and temperament is scarce and results are inconsistent. In addition, a relative lack of longitudinal data prevents inference of causality between the two constructs. In this study, infant sleep was objectively assessed among 95 infants at 3, 6, and 12 months-of-age with an actigraph in the home setting. Reactivity to sound, light, and touch, a specific aspect of temperament, was behaviorally assessed at 3 and 6 months, both during sleep (at home) and during waking (at the laboratory). Expected maturational trends were recorded in sleep, with a temporal increase in sleep efficiency and percent of motionless sleep. Quadratic (i.e., inverse U shape) relations were found, especially among girls, when predicting change in sleep by reactivity thresholds, suggesting that both hyposensitive and hypersensitive infants are at risk for poor sleep quality. These are the first research findings suggesting that low reactivity in infancy might be associated with compromised sleep quality. The observed nonlinear effects may account for null or inconsistent results in previous studies that explored only linear associations between temperament and sleep. Future studies should address both extremes of the temperament continuum when exploring relations with sleep patterns., (© 2015 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)