Is sleep longitudinally related to children's achievement, executive function and classroom behaviour?

Abstract

In this registered report, we evaluated how sleep is related to school functioning. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3002), we evaluated a series of structural equation models evaluating whether sleep at age 5 has a direct or indirect effect on academic achievement, executive function and classroom behaviour at age 9, and whether this relation is moderated by race or ethnicity, poverty, maternal education or disability. We found that sleep duration (but not other aspects of sleep health) had a direct, linear relation to attention problems, acting-out behaviours and executive functions, as well as an indirect effect on academic achievement through executive functions. We also found that this model was moderated by disability, poverty, maternal education and race or ethnicity. Our results suggest that experiencing insufficient amounts of sleep may have a disproportionately negative effect on children with disabilities or children whose mothers received less education. Initiatives to promote healthy sleep habits, including increasing sleep duration among these groups, may thus also indirectly raise measures of achievement.