Effect of sleep extension on sluggish cognitive tempo symptoms and driving behavior in adolescents with chronic short sleep
Open accessAbstract
Objective/background Few adolescents report obtaining adequate amounts of sleep. Correlational studies have linked adolescent short sleep with driving crashes and sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT), a cluster of symptoms that include sluggishness and low persistence that are related to but distinct from inattention and sleepiness. The relationship between SCT and driving is understudied, and no study has experimentally examined the relationship between SCT and sleep. We examined the relationship between SCT and driving problems in a sample of chronically short-sleeping adolescents. We also examined whether experimentally extending sleep improved SCT and driving behaviors. Participants/methods Licensed 16- to 18-year-old adolescents who regularly obtained five to seven hours of sleep completed a five-week at-home experimental protocol: a baseline week to determine typical sleep (TYP), followed in a counterbalanced order by two-week spans in which school-night bedtimes and rise times were (a) matched to TYP or (b) modified to extend (EXT) time in bed by 1.5 h/night. Sleep was monitored by actigraphy. Self- and parent-reported SCT and inattention and self-reported driving problems were recorded at baseline and following each condition. Of the 38 eligible participants who completed the baseline session, 24 completed all five weeks of the protocol. Results After controlling for inattention, only parent-reported SCT was significantly positively associated with self-reported purposeful driving violations at baseline. Adolescents reported lesser SCT during EXT than during TYP. Further, after controlling for inattention, participants who reported improvement in SCT demonstrated fewer driving problems during EXT than during TYP. Conclusions Preliminary findings suggest that extending sleep in short-sleeping adolescents may help alleviate SCT symptoms and improve driving.
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One potential cause of SCT may be insufficient or poor quality sleep.
“one potential cause of SCT may be insufficient or poor quality sleep (Becker, Epstein, et al., 2018; Garner et al., 2017; Langberg et al., 2014).”
From Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and Personality: Links to BIS/BAS Sensitivity and the Five Factor Model (2018) · cites this paper as Garner et al., 2017
The Discussion reports that extending sleep reduced adolescents’ self-reported SCT symptoms and suggests a possible cause-and-effect relationship between sleep and SCT. This supports insufficient sleep as a potential contributor, but the study did not test whether poor sleep quality causes SCT symptoms. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Feasibility of an At-Home Experimental Circadian Misalignment Induction for Adolescents
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Self-citationSomething Has to Give: An Urban Community-Engaged Focus Group Study of Teen Sleep
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“…et al., 2016) and mental health (Ly et al., 2015; McMakin & Alfano, 2015), risky, antisocial, and internalizing/externalizing behaviors (Chang et al., 2017; Fuligni et al., 2018; Owens et al., 2017; Uy & Galvan, 2017), and the risk of injury (e.g., motor vehicle crashes) (Garner et al., 2017).”
- Authors
- Garner, A. A., Hansen, A., Baxley, C., Becker, S. P., Sidol, C. A., & Beebe, D. W.
- Affiliations
- Saint Louis University (US)
- Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (US)
- University of Cincinnati (US)
- Corresponding author
- Garner, Annie A.
- Venue
- Sleep Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-02
- Volume
- 30
- Pages
- 93-96
- ISSN
- 1389-9457 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6050579
- OpenAlex
- W2535308839
- Cited by
- 37
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 5
- FWCI
- 4.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Sleep Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- State of Ohio Emergency Medical Services (134987)
- National Research Service Award (T32HT1002)
- National Institute of Mental Health (K23MH108603)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and Work-Related Fatigue
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Keywords
- sleep extension, sluggish cognitive tempo, adolescents, driver behavior, traffic offenses, inattention, sleep deprivation, bedtime and wake-up time, actigraphy
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Attention, Automobile Driving, Cognition, Female, Humans, Male, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation
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