Although frequent disturbing dreams, including bad dreams and nightmares, have been repeatedly associated with poor psychological well-being in adults, considerably less information exists on their psychosocial correlates in children. Recent empirical and theoretical contributions suggest that the association between disturbing dream frequency and psychosocial adaptation in children may differ as a function of children's negative emotionality. The current study assessed the moderating effect of very early negative emotionality (17 months of age) in the relation between disturbing dream frequency and psychosocial maladjustment (i.e., externalizing + internalizing behaviors) in a sample of 173 11-year-old children. Mixed-model analyses revealed that disturbing dream frequency was associated with some internalizing behaviors but that the association between disturbing dream frequency and most externalizing behaviors was moderated by early negative emotionality. The latter result indicates that the relation between disturbing dream frequency and externalizing behaviors was significant in 11-year-old children showing moderate negative emotionality early in life, but particularly strong in those children with high early negative emotionality. Whereas, a moderating effect of early negative emotionality was not found between disturbing dream frequency and internalizing behaviors, the findings highlight the more specific role of early emotional negativity as a developmental moderator for the link between disturbing dreams and externalizing behaviors in children. The results are discussed in light of recent models of disturbed dreaming production.

中文翻译：

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困扰儿童的梦境和社会心理失调：早期负面情绪调节作用的前瞻性研究。

尽管频繁发生的令人作呕的梦境，包括不良的梦境和噩梦，屡屡与成年人的心理健康状况有关，但有关儿童心理社会关系的信息却很少。最近的经验和理论贡献表明，困扰儿童的梦境发生频率与社会心理适应之间的联系可能因儿童的负面情绪而异。当前的研究评估了在173名11岁儿童的样本中，极早期的负面情绪（17个月大）在影响梦境频率和心理社会失调（即外在化和内在化行为）之间的调节作用。混合模型分析表明，梦境发生频率与某些内在行为有关，但梦境发生频率与大多数外在行为之间的关系是由早期的负面情绪所调节的。后一个结果表明，对于11岁的儿童，在其生命早期表现出中等的负面情绪时，他们的梦境频率与外在行为之间的关系就很明显，而在那些早期具有较高的负面情绪的孩子中，这种关系尤其明显。尽管在困扰梦境的频率和内在行为之间未发现早期负面情绪的调节作用，但研究结果突显了早期情绪否定作为影响孩子梦境和外在行为之间发展关系的更具体的作用。