Sleep and cognitive functioning in childhood: Ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex as moderators.

Abstract

We examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.44 years (52% boys, 65% European American, 35% African American) participated. Two more waves of data collection spaced one year apart followed. The majority of children (63%) were living at or below the poverty line. Children's sleep was measured objectively with actigraphy and two well-established sleep parameters were derived: duration, indexed by sleep minutes between sleep onset and wake time, and quality, indexed by efficiency. Multiple cognitive functioning domains were examined with the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities. Across the sample, higher sleep efficiency, but not duration, was associated with better cognitive performance. Significant moderation effects emerged. Controlling for socioeconomic status, AA children scored lower on general intellectual ability and working memory at age 11 only if they experienced lower sleep efficiency at age 9. Further, boys scored lower on general abilities and processing speed at age 11 only if their sleep efficiency was lower at age 9. Findings indicate that lower sleep efficiency may contribute to lower cognitive functioning especially for AA children and boys. These vulnerabilities appear to emerge early in development and are maintained over time. Results underscore the importance of individual differences in explicating relations between sleep and children's cognitive performance.

Associations between Processing Speed and Psychopathology in a Transdiagnostic, Pediatric Sample

“…In accordance with previous work on the relationship between SES and PS [94][95][96] , SES was also significantly positively associated with PS throughout all analyses. There were no significant associations with age, which is typically seen as being very important in PS development, though this is likely due to the use of standardized PS scores, which are age-normalized.…”

Higher sleep spindle activity is associated with fewer false memories in adolescent girls

“…Based on studies suggesting sex-specific differences in the relationship between sleep and cognitive performance (Bodizs, Gombos, Ujma, & Kovacs, 2014;Genzel et al, 2012;Santhi et al, 2016), we also investigated the possible role of sexual dimorphism, which may be emphasized at this point of development when pubertal maturity differences are present also on a neural level (Campbell, Grimm, de Bie, & Feinberg, 2012). The differences between adolescent girls and boys in this relation have been a topic of interest as it is evident that in girls pubertal development may be reflected in sleep structures at an early age (Campbell et al, 2012;Philbrook, Hinnant, Elmore-Staton, Buckhalt, & El-Sheikh, 2017;Santhi et al, 2016), and thus differences in sleep dependent cognitive performance may vary according to sex. Baseline differences in either sleep or cognition may explain some of the variation, but, also the sexual dimorphism in the associations between sleep and cognition have been reported (Genzel et al, 2012), also in a previous follow-up of this study population (Kuula et al, 2015).…”

Relative Roles of Race Versus Socioeconomic Position in Studies of Health Inequalities: A Matter of Interpretation

“…Studies often statistically adjust for SEP to isolate the unique (i.e., unconfounded) effect of race on a given health outcome (12,20,41,42,50,51,59,64,81,103,112,118). Similarly, albeit less commonly, efforts to isolate the independent effect of SEP on health involve statistically adjusting for race (20,95).…”

“…In pursuit of this charge, social epidemiologists often conceptualize and model race and/or SEP as primary exposures (20,41,50,51,81,95,103,112). Interpreting these coefficients, however, requires clear conceptual and operational definitions of these constructs, a task that is complicated by their multifactorial nature and data source limitations (16,59).…”

“…The conceptual and methodological considerations when modeling the unique effect of SEP, adjusting for race, have been described in previous sections (Sections 2.2 and 2.3.2). Hence, we turn our attention to the more common approach of modeling the unique effect of race (14,20,41,42,50,51,59,64,81,103,112,117) while adjusting for SEP from the perspective of two common strategies: mediation and moderation. (64) have argued that "a person's race is fixed prior to his/her measured social, physiologic, and psychological status; all of these factors are downstream of the exposure in a racially stratified society" (p. 294).…”