Association of Time in Bed, Social Jetlag, and Sleep Disturbances With Cognitive Performance in Children With ADHD

Qu, Xueqi
Kalb, Luther G.
Holingue, Calliope
Rojo-Wissar, Darlynn M.
Pritchard, Alison E.
Spira, Adam P.
Volk, Heather E.
Jacobson, Lisa A.

¹Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
²Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
³Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
⁴Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

Xueqi Qu, Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205-2103, USA. Email: [email protected]

Journal of Attention Disorders 28(1):p 99-108, January 2024. | DOI: 10.1177/10870547231204010

Objectives:

Children with ADHD commonly exhibit sleep disturbances, but there is limited knowledge about how sleep and sleep timing are associated with cognitive dysfunction in children with ADHD.

Methods:

Participants were 350 children aged 5 to 12 years diagnosed with ADHD. Three sleep-related constructs—time in bed, social jetlag (i.e., discrepancy in sleep timing pattern between school nights and weekend nights), and sleep disturbances were measured using a caregiver-report questionnaire. Linear regression models assessed the associations between sleep-related constructs and cognitive performance.

Results:

After adjustment for sociodemographic variables, there were few associations between time in bed or sleep disturbances and cognitive performance, however, greater social jetlag was negatively associated with processing speed (β = −.20, 95% CI [−0.35, −0.06]), visually-based reasoning (β = −.13, 95% CI [−0.27, 0.00]), and language-based reasoning (β = −.22, 95% CI [−0.36, −0.08]); all p < .05).

Conclusion:

Social jetlag, but not time in bed or disturbances, was associated with lower cognitive performance among children with ADHD.