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

项目概要/摘要 睡眠对儿童健康发育至关重要。然而，近三分之一的美国小学生年龄 6-11体验次优的睡眠健康。这对学习有着直接的因果关系， 学习成绩、挑战行为和执行功能（EF）失调。工作建议 睡眠在青少年时期的教育重要性导致了最近的政策变化，如推迟上学 次然而，到目前为止，有三个空白的文献，需要进一步调查。首先，研究很少 已经被设计为因果信息的程度，睡眠是相关的长期 学习困难，包括对美国儿童全国代表性队列的纵向分析。这 关于睡眠如何与学习动态地相互关联， 发展例如，睡眠不佳是否会导致儿童学习困难， 一个潜在的、稳定的特质会影响睡眠健康和学习吗？二是次优之间的联系是否 睡眠健康和较差的成绩是由行为或EF介导的尚不清楚。睡眠不佳的原因是 被认为通过增加白天的困倦来干扰孩子的学习，这增加了挑战性。 行为和妥协成功学习所必需的EF技能。到目前为止，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一项研究中探索。 中介分析。第三，弱势群体，包括残疾儿童、有色人种儿童和 那些来自经济贫困家庭的人，更有可能经历学习困难， 体验次优的睡眠健康。因此，不理想的睡眠健康可能是一个被低估的问题。 为什么弱势群体不成比例地经历学习困难，但迄今为止， 没有被直接调查。我们的项目是第一个通过分析这些差距的项目之一， 两个具有全国代表性的纵向数据集，包括关于睡眠健康和 学习：脆弱家庭和儿童福利研究，以及儿童早期纵向研究- 2010-2011年的幼儿园。我们的目标是：1）更好地了解学习困难是什么样的 受次优睡眠健康的影响，包括通过潜在的中介或相互关系;以及2） 确定次优睡眠健康的可能性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/民族，社会经济地位和残疾，将提供因果关系的证据，关于是否 在童年中期，睡眠和学习动态地相互关联（随机截取交叉滞后面板 模型）和更好地估计次优睡眠健康影响的直接和间接途径 学习困难（结构方程模型）。因此，我们的项目对 制定与睡眠有关的干预措施，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.