Short sleep duration is associated with poor performance on IQ measures in healthy school-age children

Abstract

Objective: To examine the associations between habitual sleep duration and intellectual functioning in healthy, well-rested, school-age children.

Methods: The study group consisted of 39 healthy children, aged 7-11 years old. Nightly actigraphic sleep recordings were taken for four consecutive nights to determine habitual week-night sleep duration in the home environment. Objective measures of cognitive functioning and sleepiness were used to measure daytime functioning.

Results: Longer habitual sleep duration in healthy school-age participants was associated with better performance on measures of perceptual reasoning and overall IQ, as measured by the WISC-IV, and on reported measures of competence and academic performance. No association between sleep duration and the studied behavioral measures was found.

Conclusions: These findings support the hypothesis that sleep duration is differentially related to some components of cognitive functioning, even in the absence of evidence for sleep deprivation or attention deficits.