Marchant Joshua, Ferrell Matthew, Wei Yingjia, Baron Kelly, Blackwell Courtney K, Sigal Anat, Geiger Sarah, Schantz Susan L, Hartert Tina, Kelly Rachel S, Mirzakhani Hooman, Elliott Amy, Ganiban Jody, Dabelea Dana, Hash Jonika, Stanford Joseph B
Department of Pediatrics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States.
Sleep Adv. 2025 Aug 18;6(3):zpaf049. doi: 10.1093/sleepadvances/zpaf049. eCollection 2025.
Research linking children's sleep to cognitive outcomes is inconsistent and has largely focused on one aspect of sleep, such as duration, rather than measuring multiple dimensions of sleep health. We hypothesized that children's sleep health would be positively associated with inhibitory control and cognitive functioning.
We cross-sectionally assessed 1595 participants (ages 7-11) from the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes cohort using the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery, Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Sleep Health of Children and Adolescents questionnaire, and Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System Sleep Disturbance/Sleep-related Impairment instruments. We created a novel scale measuring sleep health using dichotomous "good-bad" cutoffs for sleep duration, timing, latency, satisfaction, and alertness. We used generalized estimating equations and random forest models to examine associations between sleep health and inhibitory control, working memory, processing speed, cognitive flexibility, episodic memory, reading decoding, and receptive vocabulary.
Sleep health did not have statistically significant associations with any aspect of cognitive functioning. Notably, over 75 per cent of our sample had good sleep health.
This study assessed sleep health as a multi-faceted construct, distinguishing between "good" and "poor" sleep health across several domains. The absence of statistically significant associations between sleep health and cognitive functioning suggests children's cognitive functioning may not be cross-sectionally related to multidimensional sleep health measures. Experimentally manipulating key sleep domains such as duration or timing (as done in prior research) may be more robust. Future research might benefit from examining the cumulative impact of poor sleep health over time.
将儿童睡眠与认知结果联系起来的研究结果并不一致，并且很大程度上集中在睡眠的一个方面，如时长，而不是衡量睡眠健康的多个维度。我们假设儿童的睡眠健康与抑制控制和认知功能呈正相关。
我们使用美国国立卫生研究院工具箱认知电池、儿童和青少年睡眠健康环境影响问卷以及患者报告结局测量信息系统睡眠障碍/睡眠相关损害工具，对环境影响儿童健康结果队列中的1595名参与者（7至11岁）进行了横断面评估。我们使用二分法的“好-坏”临界值来衡量睡眠时长、时间、潜伏期、满意度和警觉性，创建了一个衡量睡眠健康的新量表。我们使用广义估计方程和随机森林模型来检验睡眠健康与抑制控制、工作记忆、处理速度、认知灵活性、情景记忆、阅读解码和接受性词汇之间的关联。
睡眠健康与认知功能的任何方面均无统计学上的显著关联。值得注意的是，我们样本中超过75%的人睡眠健康状况良好。
本研究将睡眠健康评估为一个多方面的结构，区分了几个领域中“良好”和“不佳”的睡眠健康状况。睡眠健康与认知功能之间缺乏统计学上的显著关联表明，儿童的认知功能可能与多维睡眠健康测量在横断面层面上没有关联。像之前研究那样对关键睡眠领域（如时长或时间）进行实验性操纵可能更具说服力。未来的研究或许可以从考察睡眠健康不佳随时间的累积影响中受益。
