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Childhood Sleep Functioning as a Developmental Precursor of Adolescent Adjustment Problems

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Abstract

Sleep has been linked to adjustment difficulties in both children and adolescents; yet little is known about the long-term impact of childhood sleep on subsequent development. This study tested whether childhood sleep problems, sleep quantity, and chronotype predicted internalizing and externalizing problems during adolescence. Latent Growth Modeling using the Czech portion of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (N = 4393) was utilized to test the developmental trajectories of sleep characteristics (from 1.5 to 7 years) as predictors of adjustment problems trajectories (from 11 to 18 years). Findings provided evidence that children with higher levels of sleep problems at 1.5 years (and throughout childhood) reported higher levels of internalizing and externalizing problems at age 11. Additionally, greater eveningness at age 1.5 predicted a greater increase in externalizing problems from ages 11 to 18 years. The results emphasize the importance of childhood sleep problems in evaluating the risk of future adjustment difficulties.

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Acknowledgements

The ELSPAC study was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (LM2015051 and CZ.02.1.01/.0/.0/15_003/0000469).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family Sciences, University of Kentucky, 160 Funkhouser Drive, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA

    Gabriela Ksinan Jiskrova & Alexander T. Vazsonyi

  2. Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment (RECETOX), Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kamenice 5, 625 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jana Klánová & Ladislav Dušek

  3. Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Kamenice 3, 625 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Ladislav Dušek

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  1. Gabriela Ksinan Jiskrova
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  2. Alexander T. Vazsonyi
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  3. Jana Klánová
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  4. Ladislav Dušek
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Correspondence to Gabriela Ksinan Jiskrova.

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Ksinan Jiskrova, G., Vazsonyi, A.T., Klánová, J. et al. Childhood Sleep Functioning as a Developmental Precursor of Adolescent Adjustment Problems. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 51, 239–253 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-019-00926-0

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