Cognitive benefits of last night's sleep : daily variations in children's sleep behavior are related to working memory fluctuations

  • Background: Recent studies have suggested substantial fluctuations of cognitive performance in adults both across and within days, but very little is known about such fluctuations in children. Children's sleep behavior might have an important influence on their daily cognitive resources, but so far this has not been investigated in terms of naturally occurring within-person variations in children's everyday lives. Methods: In an ambulatory assessment study, 110 elementary school children (8–11 years old) completed sleep items and working memory tasks on smartphones several times per day in school and at home for 4 weeks. Parents provided general information about the children and their sleep habits. Results: We identified substantial fluctuations in the children's daily cognitive performance, self-reported nightly sleep quality, time in bed, and daytime tiredness. All three facets were predictive of performance fluctuations in children's school and daily life. Sleep quality and time in bed were predictive of performance in the morning, and afternoon performance was related to current tiredness. The children with a lower average performance level showed a higher within-person coupling between morning performance and sleep quality. Conclusions: Our findings contribute important insights regarding a potential source of performance fluctuations in children. The effect of varying cognitive resources should be investigated further because it might impact children's daily social, emotional, and learning-related functioning. Theories about children's cognitive and educational development should consider fluctuations on micro-longitudinal scales (e.g., day-to-day) to identify possible mechanisms behind long-term changes.
Metadaten
Author:Tanja Könen, Judith Dirk, Florian SchmiedekORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-455682
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12296
ISSN:1469-7610
ISSN:0021-9630
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25052368
Parent Title (English):The journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Publisher:Wiley-Blackwell
Place of publication:Oxford
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2014
Date of first Publication:2014/07/23
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2018/02/01
Tag:Working memory; longitudinal studies; school children; sleep; structural equation modeling
Volume:56
Issue:2
Page Number:12
First Page:171
Last Page:182
Note:
© 2014 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
HeBIS-PPN:43210335X
Institutes:Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften / Psychologie
Angeschlossene und kooperierende Institutionen / Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung (DIPF)
Dewey Decimal Classification:1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung 3.0