The influence of chronotype and intelligence on academic achievement in primary school is mediated by conscientiousness, midpoint of sleep and motivation

Abstract

Individuals differ in their timing of sleep (bed times, rise times) and in their preference for morning or evening hours. Previous work focused on the relationship between academic achievement and these variables in secondary school students. The main aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between chronotype and academic achievement in 10-year-old children (n = 1125) attending 4th grade of primary school. They filled a cognitive test (Culture Fair Intelligence Test, CFT 20-R) and questions about rise times and bed times, academic achievement, conscientiousness and motivation. We used the "scales for the assessment of learning and performance motivation" (SELLMO; Skalen zur Erfassung der Lern- und Leistungsmotivation for motivation), the short version of the Five-Factor Personality Inventory Children (FFPI-C) to measure conscientiousness, and the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) to assess morningness-eveningness. Mean CSM score was 37.84 ± 6.66, midpoint of sleep was 1:36 ± 00:25 and average sleep duration (time in bed) was 10:15 ± 0:48. Morningness orientation was positively related to intelligence, conscientiousness and learning objectives. Eveningness orientation was related to avoidance performance objectives and work avoidance. Early midpoint of sleep, conscientiousness and intelligence were associated with better grades. The multivariate model showed that intelligence was the strongest predictor of good grades. Conscientiousness, motivation, younger age and an earlier midpoint of sleep were positively related to good grades. This is the first study in primary school pupils, and it shows that the relationship between evening orientation and academic achievement is already prevalent at this age even when controlling for important predictors of achievement.

Association between circadian preference and academic achievement: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…A possible explanation of the small observed effect sizes is that circadian preference does not represent the most relevant component explaining the academic achievement. Other important predictors of academic achievement are intelligence/ cognitive ability (Rindermann & Neubauer, 2004;Spinath et al, 2006), conscientiousness (Furnham et al, 2002;Steinmayr & Spinath, 2008) and motivation (Roeser et al, 2013), but to date, no study has assessed these variables together with circadian preference (Arbabi et al, 2015). Nevertheless, in the case of low academic achievement, an intervention which takes into account also a not so preponderant factor as circadian preference, could reach anyway significant outcomes (see ''practical implications'' sub-paragraph).…”

Effects of sleep timing, sleep quality and sleep duration on school achievement in adolescents

“…More recently, of the studies performed on the association between circadian preference and school performance in adolescents, the majority [9,[15][16][17][18][19][20] showed a negative association between eveningness and school performance, while only three failed to show this relationship [21][22][23]. Nevertheless, it should be noted that circadian preference has also been related to intelligence [1], with eveningness being associated with higher intelligence scores in most studies [24][25][26][27], while only one study reported the opposite relationship [28]. This set of results could potentially explain the partial disagreement among studies that have recently explored the relationship between circadian preference and school performance in adolescents [9,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Lower school performance in late chronotypes: underlying factors and mechanisms

“…Importantly, early and late chronotypes in our study performed equally well in the afternoon. A number of reports have purported that either early or late chronotypes are more or less intelligent 11–13 . Based on the lack of agreement between these studies, their weak significance, and our previous findings, we assume that chronotype is not associated with intelligence.…”