Psychological factors associated with self-awakening ability

Introduction: Some individuals, defined as “self-awakeners”, report the ability to spontaneously awake from nocturnal sleep, at a desired time, without the aid of any alarm clock or other external stimuli. This ability possibly implies planning one's awakening time at sleep onset and automatically triggering during sleep a gradual change of physiological variables leading to the transition to wakefulness. While a number of studies have described the modifications of physiological and behavioural variables in proximity of awakening, as well as the objective sleep features of self-awkeners4, only few others have investigated psychological factors (e.g. self-efficacy5, motivation6 and chronotype7), so that it still remains largely unclear which of them, and to what extent, are involved in successful self-awakening. Here we compare a group of Self- and Forced awakeners on a set of psychological and chronobiological variables (i.e., personality traits, anxiety, depression levels and chronotype) with the aim of assessing the possible role of these factors in the modulation of self-awakening ability. Materials and methods: A sample of 1176 young volunteers completed the following self-report instruments: (1) a questionnaire on sleep habits to distinguish Self-Awakeners (SA) from Forced Awakeners (FA) (two items were considered as inclusion criteria for the SA group: not habitually using any alarm to wake up, selfreported ability to wake up at a predetermined time); (2) the Morningness - Eveningness Questionnaire, MEQ; (3) the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, PSQI; (4) the Ten Item Big Five Inventory, TIBI ; (5) the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, STAI; (6) the Beck Depression Inventory, BDI-II. For continuous variables, between-groups differences were assessed through non parametric Mann-Whitney Test, due to non normal distribution of the variables verified through the Shapiro test. Chi square test was performed, instead, to address differences in chronotypology. Results: Our sample includes 136 SA. Compared to FA, SA are more frequently morning types and show a higher degree of Conscientiousness and Neuroticism. No significant inter-group differences emerged, instead, in depression, anxiety, extraversion, agreeableness, openness and subjective sleep quality scores. Discussion: Our findings confirm extant literature on the association between morning chronotypology and self-awakening ability. Moreover, they suggest that, along with physiological and chronobiological factors, interindividual differences in personality traits (namely conscientiousness and neuroticism) may play a significant role in modulating this ability.