Investigating Sleep-Related Disparities in U.S. Childrens Learning Difficulties

项目概要/摘要 睡眠对于儿童的健康发展至关重要。然而，近三分之一的美国小学生年龄 6-11 睡眠健康状况不佳。这对学习有直接的因果影响，包括较贫困的人 学业成就、挑战性行为和执行功能 (EF) 失调。工作建议 睡眠在青春期的教育重要性导致了最近的政策变化，例如推迟开学 次。然而迄今为止，文献中还存在三个空白，需要进一步研究。首先，研究很少 被设计为关于睡眠与长期相关程度的因果信息 学习困难，包括对具有全国代表性的美国儿童群体的纵向分析。这个 关于睡眠如何与整个学习动态关联的问题尚未得到解答 发展。例如，睡眠健康状况不佳是否会导致儿童出现学习困难，或者 潜在的、稳定的特征是否会影响睡眠健康和学习？二、之间的联系是否欠佳 睡眠健康和较差的成绩是由行为或 EF 介导的尚不清楚。睡眠健康状况不佳是 人们认为，白天的困倦增加会干扰儿童的学习，从而增加挑战性 行为并损害成功学习所需的 EF 技能。迄今为止，直接和间接 次优睡眠健康与成就、EF 和行为之间的联系尚未在研究中进行探讨。 中介分析。第三，弱势群体，包括残疾儿童、有色人种儿童和 来自经济困难家庭的学生更有可能遇到学习困难并 睡眠健康状况不佳。因此，睡眠健康不佳可能是一个未被充分认识的问题 为什么弱势群体不成比例地经历学习困难的机制，但迄今为止 尚未被直接调查。我们的项目是第一个通过分析来评估这些差距的项目之一 两个具有全国代表性的纵向数据集，其中包括有关睡眠健康和睡眠健康的丰富而详细的数据 学习：脆弱家庭和儿童福祉研究以及幼儿纵向研究- 2010-2011 年幼儿园队列。我们的目标是： 1) 更好地理解学习困难的表现形式 受到次优睡眠健康的影响，包括通过潜在的中介或相互关系； 2) 至 确定睡眠健康状况不佳的可能性更大是否有助于解释为什么弱势群体 更有可能遇到学习困难。我们将通过严格的方法评估这些目标 种族/族裔、社会经济地位和残疾将提供关于是否存在因果关系的证据 童年中期睡眠和学习动态地相互关联（随机截取交叉滞后面板 建模）以及更好地估计次优睡眠健康影响的直接和间接路径 学习困难（结构方程建模）。因此，我们的项目对 制定与睡眠相关的干预措施，促进入学准备和持续健康发展。

Project Summary/Abstract Sleep is crucial for healthy childhood development. Yet nearly a third of U.S. elementary school children aged 6-11 experience suboptimal sleep health. This has direct and causal implications for learning including poorer academic achievement, challenging behavior, and executive function (EF) dysregulation. Work suggesting sleep’s educational importance during adolescence has led to recent policy changes like delaying school start times. Yet to date, there are three gaps in the literature which require further investigation. First, few studies have been designed to be causally-informative regarding the extent to which sleep is related to long-term learning difficulties including in longitudinal analyses of nationally representative cohorts of U.S. children. This has left unanswered questions regarding how sleep dynamically interrelates with learning throughout development. For instance, does suboptimal sleep health cause children to experience learning difficulties, or does a latent, stable trait affect both sleep health and learning? Second, whether the link between suboptimal sleep health and poorer achievement is mediated by behavior or EF is unclear. Suboptimal sleep health is thought to interfere with children’s learning through increased daytime sleepiness, which increases challenging behaviors and compromises EF skills necessary for successful learning. Yet to date, the direct and indirect links between suboptimal sleep health and achievement, EF, and behavior have not been explored in a mediational analysis. Third, vulnerable populations, including children with disabilities, children of color, and those from economically disadvantaged homes, are more likely to both experience learning difficulties and to experience suboptimal sleep health. Suboptimal sleep health may therefore be an under-recognized mechanism for why vulnerable populations disproportionately experience learning difficulties, but to date this has been not been directly investigated. Our project is among the first to assess these gaps through analysis of two nationally representative, longitudinal datasets that include rich and detailed data on both sleep health and learning: the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Kindergarten cohort of 2010-2011. Our aims are: 1) To better understand in what ways learning difficulties are influenced by suboptimal sleep health including through potential mediational or reciprocal relations; and 2) To ascertain whether a greater likelihood for suboptimal sleep health helps explain why vulnerable populations are more likely to experience learning difficulties. We will assess these aims through rigorous methods stratified by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and disability that will offer causally-informed evidence regarding whether sleep and learning dynamically interrelate during middle childhood (random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling) and better estimation of the direct and indirect paths by which suboptimal sleep health influences learning difficulties (structural equation modeling). Our project thus has significant implications for the development of sleep-related interventions that promote school readiness and continued healthy development.