Sleep Patterns and Academic Achievement in Grade 1 and 2 Children

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine associations between sleep patterns (sleep duration, sleep schedule regularity, sleep quality) and academic achievement (reading, writing, mathematics, overall achievement) in healthy, typically developing children who are just beginning formal education (i.e., grades 1 and 2). The study sample included 63 children, each with a participating parent. One week of parent-report sleep diary was used to assess children’s sleep duration and sleep schedule regularity, and the Children’s Sleep Wake Scale was used to assess sleep quality. Academic achievement was assessed using the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement (WJ-IV ACH). Poorer sleep patterns were not associated with academic decrements in any of the areas assessed, possibly due to our restrictive sample which comprised of children who could all be classified as good sleepers. Sleep duration had weak associations with reading and writing achievement such that as sleep duration decreased, achievement in reading and writing increased. These findings might be explained by an extension of the neural efficiency theory (i.e., more efficient daytime and nighttime processing/learning in shorter sleepers), the explanation that more time awake allows for additional learning, or the explanation that the children who slept longer did so to make up for less restorative sleep. Alternatively, other unidentified variables might account for the weak relationships seen. The study’s findings suggest that in a sample of grade 1 and 2 children sleeping adequate amounts, more sleep is not necessarily better in terms of academic learning. Future researchers are encouraged to continue to utilize more narrowly defined age groupings and strict health screening criteria to determine if these preliminary results can be replicated and if the same associations hold true for children at other stages of development.