Chronotype and time of day effects on verbal and facial emotional Stroop task performance in adolescents

Jan 5, 2022Chronobiology international

How Sleep Patterns and Time of Day Affect Teens’ Verbal and Facial Emotional Stroop Task Performance

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Abstract

351 Taiwanese adolescents showed delayed responses to anger stimuli in the morning.

Chronotype influences performance on facial emotion processing tasks, with distinct effects observed across different times of day.
Younger adolescents with an Evening chronotype demonstrated slower reactions to anger faces, regardless of testing time.
In Evening chronotypes, poorer sleep quality and worse mental health outcomes were associated with reduced responses to anger compared to neutral stimuli.
The relationship between diminished responses to anger and increased mental health difficulties was fully mediated by sleep quality.

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This study investigated chronotype and time of day effects on lexical and facial emotion processing tasks and explored relationships with sleep quality and mental health outcomes. Participants were 351 Taiwanese adolescents (204 males) aged 13 to 16 years of age who completed both a Facial-Emotional Stroop and a Lexical-Emotional Stroop task at 08:00-10:00 am or at 14:00-16:00 pm. Chronotype was measured using the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) and grouped into Morning (n = 46), Intermediate (n = 248) or Evening types (n = 57). Participants completed validated measures of sleep quality (PSQI) and mental health difficulties (DASS-21). The study observed independent effects of time of day and chronotype on the Facial-Emotional Stroop task. Independent of chronotype group, delayed reaction times to anger stimuli were observed in adolescents tested in the morning. Younger adolescents with an Evening chronotype showed delayed responses to anger faces independent of the time of testing. Facial-Emotional Stroop task performance correlated with reported sleep quality and mental health only in Evening chronotypes, with attenuated responses to anger versus neutral stimuli associated with poorer sleep quality and worse mental health outcomes. An exploratory simple mediation analysis indicated that the relationship between attenuated responses to anger and greater mental health difficulties was fully mediated by poorer sleep quality. This study provides evidence of diurnal and chronotype-related variation in facial threat-related processing in typical adolescent development. It also indicates how social emotional processing is vulnerable to sleep disruptions and is linked to the greater mental health problems observed in adolescents with an eveningness profile.

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Chronotype and time of day effects on verbal and facial emotional Stroop task performance in adolescents

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