Data will be made available on reasonable request. Declaration of Competing Interests: No conflicts of interest declared in relation to this paper. Contributors: All authors contributed to developing the design of this study and data collection. Data was analysed by UA. Interpretation of results was conducted by UA. An initial version of the manuscript was written by UA. Following, input was sought from all other authors who approved the final version of the manuscript.

Cognitive models highlight the role of attentional and interpretive biases for sleep-specific cues in the development and maintenance of insomnia (Espie et al., 2006;Harvey, 2002). Particularly, the experiences of arousal, distress and negative sleep-related thoughts and beliefs are considered to facilitate the onset of sleepspecific anxiety. This anxiety directs attentional resources towards sleep-related cues related to the internal (e.g., rapid heart rate) and external (e.g., passing car noise) environment (Espie et al., 2006;