Time for bed: associations with cognitive performance in 7-year-old children: a longitudinal population-based study

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Abstract

Background

Little is known about the links between the time that young children go to bed and their cognitive development. In this paper we seek to examine whether bedtimes in early childhood are related to cognitive test scores in 7-year-olds.

Methods

We examined data on bedtimes and cognitive test (z-scores) for reading, maths and spatial abilities for 11 178 7-year-old children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study.

Results

At age 7, not having a regular bedtime was related to lower cognitive test scores in girls: reading (β: −0.22), maths (β: −0.26) and spatial (β: −0.15), but not for boys. Non-regular bedtimes at age 3 were independently associated, in girls and boys, with lower reading (β: −0.10, −0.20), maths (β: −0.16, −0.11) and spatial (β: −0.13, −0.16) scores. Cumulative relationships were apparent. Girls who never had regular bedtimes at ages 3, 5 and 7 had significantly lower reading (β: −0.36), maths (β: −0.51) and spatial (β: −0.40) scores, while for boys this was the case for those having non-regular bedtimes at any two ages (3, 5 or 7 years): reading (β: −0.28), maths (β: −0.22) and spatial (β: −0.26) scores. In boys having non-regular bedtimes at all three ages (3, 5 and 7 years) were non-significantly related to lower reading, maths and spatial scores.

Conclusions

The consistent nature of bedtimes during early childhood is related to cognitive performance. Given the importance of early child development, there may be knock on effects for health throughout life.

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Most cited references 30

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Social jetlag: misalignment of biological and social time.

Marc Wittmann, Jenny Dinich, Martha Merrow … (2006)

Humans show large differences in the preferred timing of their sleep and activity. This so-called "chronotype" is largely regulated by the circadian clock. Both genetic variations in clock genes and environmental influences contribute to the distribution of chronotypes in a given population, ranging from extreme early types to extreme late types with the majority falling between these extremes. Social (e.g., school and work) schedules interfere considerably with individual sleep preferences in the majority of the population. Late chronotypes show the largest differences in sleep timing between work and free days leading to a considerable sleep debt on work days, for which they compensate on free days. The discrepancy between work and free days, between social and biological time, can be described as 'social jetlag.' Here, we explore how sleep quality and psychological wellbeing are associated with individual chronotype and/or social jetlag. A total of 501 volunteers filled out the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire (MCTQ) as well as additional questionnaires on: (i) sleep quality (SF-A), (ii) current psychological wellbeing (Basler Befindlichkeitsbogen), (iii) retrospective psychological wellbeing over the past week (POMS), and (iv) consumption of stimulants (e.g., caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol). Associations of chronotype, wellbeing, and stimulant consumption are strongest in teenagers and young adults up to age 25 yrs. The most striking correlation exists between chronotype and smoking, which is significantly higher in late chronotypes of all ages (except for those in retirement). We show these correlations are most probably a consequence of social jetlag, i.e., the discrepancies between social and biological timing rather than a simple association to different chronotypes. Our results strongly suggest that work (and school) schedules should be adapted to chronotype whenever possible.

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Short screening scales to monitor population prevalences and trends in non-specific psychological distress.

R C Kessler, G. Andrews, L Colpe … (2002)

A 10-question screening scale of psychological distress and a six-question short-form scale embedded within the 10-question scale were developed for the redesigned US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Initial pilot questions were administered in a US national mail survey (N = 1401). A reduced set of questions was subsequently administered in a US national telephone survey (N = 1574). The 10-question and six-question scales, which we refer to as the K10 and K6, were constructed from the reduced set of questions based on Item Response Theory models. The scales were subsequently validated in a two-stage clinical reappraisal survey (N = 1000 telephone screening interviews in the first stage followed by N = 153 face-to-face clinical interviews in the second stage that oversampled first-stage respondents who screened positive for emotional problems) in a local convenience sample. The second-stage sample was administered the screening scales along with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID). The K6 was subsequently included in the 1997 (N = 36116) and 1998 (N = 32440) US National Health Interview Survey, while the K10 was included in the 1997 (N = 10641) Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being. Both the K10 and K6 have good precision in the 90th-99th percentile range of the population distribution (standard errors of standardized scores in the range 0.20-0.25) as well as consistent psychometric properties across major sociodemographic subsamples. The scales strongly discriminate between community cases and non-cases of DSM-IV/SCID disorders, with areas under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.87-0.88 for disorders having Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores of 0-70 and 0.95-0.96 for disorders having GAF scores of 0-50. The brevity, strong psychometric properties, and ability to discriminate DSM-IV cases from non-cases make the K10 and K6 attractive for use in general-purpose health surveys. The scales are already being used in annual government health surveys in the US and Canada as well as in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Routine inclusion of either the K10 or K6 in clinical studies would create an important, and heretofore missing, crosswalk between community and clinical epidemiology.

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The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review.

Julia F Dewald, Anne M. Meijer, Frans J Oort … (2010)

Insufficient sleep, poor sleep quality and sleepiness are common problems in children and adolescents being related to learning, memory and school performance. The associations between sleep quality (k=16 studies, N=13,631), sleep duration (k=17 studies, N=15,199), sleepiness (k=17, N=19,530) and school performance were examined in three separate meta-analyses including influential factors (e.g., gender, age, parameter assessment) as moderators. All three sleep variables were significantly but modestly related to school performance. Sleepiness showed the strongest relation to school performance (r=-0.133), followed by sleep quality (r=0.096) and sleep duration (r=0.069). Effect sizes were larger for studies including younger participants which can be explained by dramatic prefrontal cortex changes during (early) adolescence. Concerning the relationship between sleep duration and school performance age effects were even larger in studies that included more boys than in studies that included more girls, demonstrating the importance of differential pubertal development of boys and girls. Longitudinal and experimental studies are recommended in order to gain more insight into the different relationships and to develop programs that can improve school performance by changing individuals' sleep patterns. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Epidemiol Community Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Epidemiol Community Health

Journal ID (hwp): jech

Journal ID (publisher-id): jech

Title: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group (BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JR )

ISSN (Print): 0143-005X

ISSN (Electronic): 1470-2738

Publication date (Print): November 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 8 July 2013

Volume: 67

Issue: 11

Pages: 926-931

Affiliations

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London , London, UK

Author notes

Correspondence to Professor Yvonne Kelly, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK, y.kelly@ 123456ucl.ac.uk

Article

Publisher ID: jech-2012-202024

DOI: 10.1136/jech-2012-202024

PMC ID: 3812865

PubMed ID: 23835763

SO-VID: 83a2181c-324f-4be7-9792-f2686ba96e28

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

History

Date received : 4 October 2012

Date revision received : 9 January 2013

Date accepted : 29 May 2013

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: sleep,cognition,epidemiology

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: sleep, cognition, epidemiology

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Time for bed: associations with cognitive performance in 7-year-old children: a longitudinal population-based study

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UCL: UN SDG 03 Good Health and Well-Being

Most cited references 30

Social jetlag: misalignment of biological and social time.

Short screening scales to monitor population prevalences and trends in non-specific psychological distress.

The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review.

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