Sleepiness, Neuropsychological Skills, and Scholastic Learning in Children

Abstract

Excessive daytime sleepiness is a frequent condition among children and adolescents that may lead to several and significant daytime consequences, including impaired neurocognitive skills and scholastic performance. Here, we evaluated in one hundred and ninety-one unselected primary school children, the relationship between sleepiness and a wide range of cognitive and academic skills through a standardized neuropsychological test battery. In order to assess the statistical relationship, we performed a partial least squares path modelling, a non-parametrical approach which combined a model of paths between latent variables and the coefficients between indicators and dimensions. Results were validated through the bootstrap approach and suggest that sleepiness is not associated with all cognitive and scholastic abilities, but only with those relying on verbal abilities and complex cognitive functions (i.e., reading comprehension, oral/syntactic comprehension, spelling, and mathematic skills). Our data suggest the idea that sleepiness in children is associated mostly with “higher” (mainly verbal) cognitive function(s), while the visuospatial domain was not affected.

Workload, Techno Overload, and Behavioral Stress During COVID-19 Emergency: The Role of Job Crafting in Remote Workers

“…The multivariate nature of SEM permits us to study nondirectly observable phenomena, quite common in disciplines such as psychology, economy, and educational sciences. Different applications with parametric and non-parametric SEM can be found in Signore et al (2019Signore et al ( , 2020 and Macchitella et al (2020). To examine the goodness of fit of the overall model, we assessed χ 2 , RMSEA, SRMR, CFI, TLI, and AGFI.…”

“…Furthermore, the sample was a convenient one: the subsequent heterogeneity of some sociodemographic features, such as contract type, working sector, age, etc., imply further insights. Finally, the sample size did not consist of a complete generalization of outcomes to the Italian population: this limit can be overcome by using nonparametrical causal methodologies, as for example PLS-SEM (Signore et al, 2019;Macchitella et al, 2020). Nevertheless, starting from the discussion of the results and despite the limitations described above, this study can be considered a first explorative investigation of the literature about job crafting during the COVID-19 emergency and about the strategies that employees implemented to manage the negative behavioral consequences of remote working during the pandemic.…”

A sonolência está associada a sintomas de ansiedade em escolares de 9 a 11 anos?

“…Um estudo longitudinal mostrou que ambientes com iluminação inadequada durante as fases do dia podem interferir na produção e secreção de melatonina fazendo com que essa anormalidade do sono se torne cada vez mais frequente entre as pessoas (Touitou et al, 2017). Um dos fatores que pode afetar o horário do sono entre as crianças é o uso inadequado e tardio de equipamentos eletrônicos (Macchitella et al, 2020).…”

“…Um estudo que analisou a relação entre obesidade, sono e atividade física evidenciou que quanto menos a criança se exercita maiores são as chances de desenvolver obesidade, e quanto mais obesa a criança for, maior dificuldade para dormir ela terá (Ji et al, 2018). Tendo em vista que o uso excessivo e precoce de equipamentos eletrônicos por crianças pode reduzir o interesse na prática de atividade física regular, faz-se necessária a inserção de aulas de Educação Física para este público (Macchitella et al, 2020). Em especial na escola onde o presente estudo foi realizado, pois não apresenta profissionais de Educação Física para a realização de aulas práticas.…”

Erratum: Macchitella et al. Sleepiness, Neuropsychological Skills, and Scholastic Learning in Children. Brain Sci. 2020, 10, 529

“…The author wishes to make an erratum to the published version of the paper [1]. The citation order was mistaken in the production process and three references needed to be added to the References section; thus, the reference list needs to be updated.…”