Last night's sleep in relation to academic achievement and neurocognitive testing performance in adolescents with and without ADHD
Open accessAbstract
Objectives/background Objectives were to (1) examine previous night's sleep in relation to next day performance on standardized academic achievement and neurocognitive assessments in adolescents, and (2) explore whether previous night's sleep is differentially associated with testing performance for adolescents with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants/methods Participants were 300 adolescents (ages 12-14 years; 55% male). Approximately half (53.6%) were diagnosed with ADHD. Adolescents provided ratings of their previous night's sleep quality, sleep duration, and number of night wakings and were administered standardized tests of processing speed and working memory, as well as word reading, numerical operations, and math fluency academic achievement. Results In analyses controlling for sex, race, medication use, time of testing, and ADHD group status, more night wakings the previous night were associated with significantly lower numerical operations and math fluency achievement scores and marginally lower working memory scores. Previous night's sleep was not associated with processing speed or reading achievement. ADHD status did not moderate sleep in relation to academic/neurocognitive performance. Participants reporting ≥2 night wakings the previous night had slightly over half a standard deviation lower scores on average compared to participants reporting 0 night wakings. Conclusions This preliminary study suggests that previous night's wakings are associated with poorer mathematics performance the next day, regardless of ADHD status. This may be due to the detrimental effect of interrupted and fragmented sleep on attention and executive control. These findings have implications for clinicians and educators when considering contextual factors that may impact academic and neurocognitive testing performance.
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The acute medication effects on test scores were smaller than the effect of having uninterrupted sleep the night before testing.
“For context, these effects were smaller than that of having uninterrupted sleep the night before testing (Cusick et al., 2018).”
From The effect of stimulant medication on the learning of academic curricula in children with ADHD: A randomized crossover study. (2022) · cites this paper as Cusick et al., 2018
The Results (page not available in our copy) report higher math scores among adolescents with no night wakings than among those with two or more. But medication use was a covariate, not an acute medication effect tested against the sleep association; the paper does not support the claimed comparison of effect sizes. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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- Authors
- Cusick, C. N., Isaacson, P. A., Langberg, J. M., & Becker, S. P.
- Affiliations
- Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (US)
- Virginia Commonwealth University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Becker, Stephen P.
- Venue
- Sleep Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-12
- Volume
- 52
- Pages
- 75-79
- ISSN
- 1389-9457 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6246815
- OpenAlex
- W2888577791
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 2.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Sleep Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Grantee Submission
- Funders
- Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
- U.S. Department of Education
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (K23MH108603)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Keywords
- sleep quality, nocturnal awakenings, sleep disruption, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, adolescents, academic performance, mathematical fluency, number operations, working memory, processing speed, reading achievement, neuropsychological performance, sleep duration
- MeSH terms
- Academic Success, Adolescent, Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity, Child, Female, Humans, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Sleep
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