The Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Prospective Link Between Sleep-Affect Spillover and Anxiety Symptoms: A Daily Diary Study Combined With Panel Data

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) carry enduring consequences, yet their role in shaping both real-time emotional reactivity and long-term vulnerability remains underexplored. We investigated how ACEs and their dimensions (threat, deprivation) influence sleep-affect spillover—individual differences in the coupling between prior-night sleep-onset difficulty and next-day negative affect (NA)—and whether spillover predicts later anxiety. Leveraging a rich multiple-time-scale data set (sample size: N = 420; diaries: N = 10,680), we employed multilevel modeling to capture individual-specific spillover effects. Nights of greater sleep-onset difficulty predicted higher next-day NA at within- and between-persons levels. Mediation analyses did not support spillover as a pathway from ACEs to anxiety. Instead, moderation analyses showed ACEs amplified the spillover-anxiety association: Stronger spillover predicted elevated anxiety among individuals experiencing more ACEs. Findings highlight that ACEs function less as direct antecedents and more as amplifiers of dynamic processes of emotional reactivity that consolidate into psychopathology.