Does Prior Night’s Sleep Impact Next Day’s Executive Functioning? It Depends on an Individual’s Average Sleep Quality

Authors

  • Dian Yu Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University, USA
  • Carolina Goncalves Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University, USA
  • Pei-Jung Yang National Chengchi University, Taiwan
  • G. John Geldhof Oregon State University, USA
  • Laura Michaelson American Institutes for Research
  • Yue Ni Oregon State University, USA
  • Richard M. Lerner Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17505/jpor.2022.24218

Keywords:

within-person variability, executive functioning, sleep, intensive longitudinal research

Abstract

Executive functioning (EF) is a series of fundamental goal-directed cognitive abilities that enable effective learning. Differences in daily sleep quality may covary with fluctuations in EF among youth. Most studies linking sleep to EF rely on between-person differences and average effects for the sample. This study employed an intensive longitudinal design and examined the within-person relations between self-reported prior night’s sleep quality and next day’s EF. Students from Grades 4 to 12 (M age= 14.60, SD = 2.53) completed three behavioral EF tasks repeatedly across approximately one semester. The final analytic sample included 2898 observations embedded in 73 participants. Although, on average, sleep did not significantly covary with EF, there was heterogeneity in within-person sleep-EF relations. Moreover, individuals’ average sleep quality moderated within-person effects. For individuals with low mean sleep quality, a better-than-usual sleep quality was linked to better EF performance. However, for individuals with high mean sleep quality, better-than-usual sleep quality was linked to worse EF performance. Understanding person-specific relations between sleep and EF can help educators optimize EF and learning on a daily basis and produce positive academic outcomes across longer time periods.

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Published

2022-06-01