Emotions are an integral part of the human experience and their interpretation can provide valuable but also misleading clues about oneself and other people’s state of mind. Negative emotional states can be perceived as uncomfortable and – when experienced chronically – can develop into anxiety and mood disorders. The more pervasive these disorders the more severely they affect and disable a person’s everyday functioning and often their sleep as well. According to Lang and colleagues (1998), emotions may be expressed verbally, behaviorally, and physiologically, i.e., emotions can be reported, observed, and objectively measured. Each measurement approach provides important, unique, and often conflicting information that can be used in the assessment and treatment evaluation of psychological disorders affecting the emotions. Autonomic measures have been used to indicate the physiological components of emotions, such as those along the worry-anxiety-fear-panic spectrum. Worry has been shown to suppress cardiac responses to imaginal feared material (see Borkovec, Alcaine, & Behar, 2004) and reduce autonomic variability (Hoehn-Saric, McLeod, Funderburk, & Kowalski, 2004; Hoehn-Saric, McLeod, & Zimmerli, 1989). Results for panic and anticipatory anxiety are less conclusive but theoretically these states should go along with increased autonomic arousal. Abnormal autonomic arousal might also be present during sleep as both panic disorder and worrying have been associated with sleeping difficulties. However, most empirical research has been confined to the laboratory where high internal validity is achieved at the cost of poor ecological validity. Thus, the purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to extend and validate laboratory findings on worry, anticipatory anxiety, and panic using ambulatory monitoring. Twenty-four hour monitoring not only can give valuable insights into a person’s daytime emotional experience but also allows observing how these emotions might affect their sleep in their natural environment. In the following chapter, the reader will be introduced to a conceptual framework that ties together worry, anxiety, fear, and panic, and related anxiety disorders (section 2.1), to autonomic arousal and electrodermal and cardiac arousal in particular (section 2.2), to sleep and its relation to autonomic arousal and anxiety disorders (section 2.3), and to ambulatory monitoring (section 2.4). After illustrating the aims of this thesis (chapter 3), chapters 4 to 6 present the results of three empirical studies conducted as part of this doctoral research. The first study deals solely with electrodermal monitoring and how it is affected by confounding variables in an ambulatory context (chapter 4). The next study then seeks to investigate the relationship between electrodermal arousal and anticipatory anxiety and panic in a sample of panic disorder patients and healthy controls. The last study focuses primarily on the effect of trait and state worry on subjective and objective sleep and electrodermal and cardiac arousal in a group of high and low worriers. Chapters 7 to 9 summarize and integrate the findings from these three empirical studies, discuss methodological limitations, and provide an outlook into future research.

Emotions are an integral part of the human experience and their interpretation can provide valuable but also misleading clues about oneself and other people’s state of mind. Negative emotional states can be perceived as uncomfortable and – when experienced chronically – can develop into anxiety and mood disorders. The more pervasive these disorders the more severely they affect and disable a person’s everyday functioning and often their sleep as well. According to Lang and colleagues (1998), emotions may be expressed verbally, behaviorally, and physiologically, i.e., emotions can be reported, observed, and objectively measured. Each measurement approach provides important, unique, and often conflicting information that can be used in the assessment and treatment evaluation of psychological disorders affecting the emotions. Autonomic measures have been used to indicate the physiological components of emotions, such as those along the worry-anxiety-fear-panic spectrum. Worry has been shown to suppress cardiac responses to imaginal feared material (see Borkovec, Alcaine, & Behar, 2004) and reduce autonomic variability (Hoehn-Saric, McLeod, Funderburk, & Kowalski, 2004; Hoehn-Saric, McLeod, & Zimmerli, 1989). Results for panic and anticipatory anxiety are less conclusive but theoretically these states should go along with increased autonomic arousal. Abnormal autonomic arousal might also be present during sleep as both panic disorder and worrying have been associated with sleeping difficulties. However, most empirical research has been confined to the laboratory where high internal validity is achieved at the cost of poor ecological validity. Thus, the purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to extend and validate laboratory findings on worry, anticipatory anxiety, and panic using ambulatory monitoring. Twenty-four hour monitoring not only can give valuable insights into a person’s daytime emotional experience but also allows observing how these emotions might affect their sleep in their natural environment. In the following chapter, the reader will be introduced to a conceptual framework that ties together worry, anxiety, fear, and panic, and related anxiety disorders (section 2.1), to autonomic arousal and electrodermal and cardiac arousal in particular (section 2.2), to sleep and its relation to autonomic arousal and anxiety disorders (section 2.3), and to ambulatory monitoring (section 2.4). After illustrating the aims of this thesis (chapter 3), chapters 4 to 6 present the results of three empirical studies conducted as part of this doctoral research. The first study deals solely with electrodermal monitoring and how it is affected by confounding variables in an ambulatory context (chapter 4). The next study then seeks to investigate the relationship between electrodermal arousal and anticipatory anxiety and panic in a sample of panic disorder patients and healthy controls. The last study focuses primarily on the effect of trait and state worry on subjective and objective sleep and electrodermal and cardiac arousal in a group of high and low worriers. Chapters 7 to 9 summarize and integrate the findings from these three empirical studies, discuss methodological limitations, and provide an outlook into future research.