Sleep and performance on attention tasks in adolescents

January 01, 0001

Sleep and performance on attention tasks in adolescents

These Korean investigators studied the relationship between insufficient sleep and poor attention in Korean adolescents, adjusting for potential confounding factors of depressed mood and habitual snoring in a school-based cross-sectional study including 8 high schools in 3 cities in the Republic of Korea. A sample of 2638 urban high school students (42.2% male and 57.8% female; mean age, 17.3 years [age range, 14-19 years

They found: "The mean sleep duration on weekdays was 5 hours 42 minutes per day and on weekends was 8 hours 24 minutes per day. The mean weekend catch-up sleep was 2 hours 42 minutes per day. After adjusting for age, sex, depressed mood (Beck Depression Inventory score, 10), habitual snoring, and weekday sleep duration, increased weekend catch-up sleep was significantly associated with more omission and commission errors on sustained attention tasks and on divided attention tasks."

The authors concluded: "Increased weekend catch-up sleep as an indicator of insufficient weekday sleep is associated with poor performance on objective attention tasks. Assessment of catch-up sleep and sleep duration may be useful for physicians to evaluate sleep insufficiency and its adverse effects on attention in adolescents."

Adolescents need more than 5-6 hours sleep per night for optimal school performance.


For the full abstract, click here.

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 165(9):806-812, September 2011 © 2011 to the American Medical Association
Relationship Between Weekend Catch-up Sleep and Poor Performance on Attention Tasks in Korean Adolescents. Seog Ju Kim, Yu Jin Lee, Seong-Jin Cho, In-Hee Cho, Weonjeong Lim, Wonshin Lim. Correspondence to Dr. Lee: [email protected]

Category: N. Neurological. Keywords: sleep, adolescents, attention, cross-sectional study, journal watch.
Synopsis edited by Dr Linda French, Toledo, Ohio. Posted on Global Family Doctor 20 September 2011

Pearls are an independent product of the Cochrane primary care group and are meant for educational use and not to guide clinical care.

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