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

项目摘要/摘要 睡眠对儿童健康成长至关重要。然而，近三分之一的美国小学生年龄 6-11体验次佳的睡眠健康。这对学习有直接和因果的影响，包括更差的 学业成就、具有挑战性的行为和执行功能失调。工作建议 睡眠对青春期教育的重要性导致了最近的政策变化，比如推迟开学 泰晤士报。然而，到目前为止，文献中有三个空白需要进一步研究。首先，很少有研究 都被设计成关于睡眠与长期睡眠相关的程度的因果信息 学习困难，包括对具有全国代表性的美国儿童队列的纵向分析。这 留下了关于睡眠如何与学习动态相关的悬而未决的问题 发展。例如，睡眠健康状况不佳是否会导致儿童学习困难，或者 潜在的、稳定的特质是否会同时影响睡眠健康和学习？其次，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不清楚引起的。睡眠健康状况欠佳的是 被认为通过增加白天的困倦来干扰儿童的学习，这增加了挑战性 行为和妥协的EF技能是成功学习所必需的。然而到目前为止，直接和间接的 次优睡眠健康与成就、EF和行为之间的联系还没有在一项 调解分析。第三，弱势群体，包括残疾儿童、有色人种儿童和 那些来自经济困难家庭的人，更有可能同时经历学习困难和 体验次佳的睡眠健康。因此，睡眠健康状况欠佳可能是一个未得到充分认识的问题 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 一直没有受到直接调查。我们的项目是首批评估这些差距的项目之一，通过分析 两个具有全国代表性的纵向数据集，包括丰富和详细的睡眠健康数据和 学习：脆弱家庭和儿童福祉研究，以及儿童早期纵向研究- 2010-2011年的幼儿园队列。我们的目标是：1)更好地了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互惠关系；以及2) 确定睡眠健康低于最佳状态的可能性是否更大，这是否有助于解释为什么脆弱人群 更有可能遇到学习困难。我们将通过严格的方法来评估这些目标，这些方法按 种族/民族，社会经济地位和残疾，将提供因果关系的证据 在童年中期，睡眠和学习动态相关(随机截取交叉滞后面板 建模)和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.