Childhood Sleep Functioning as a Developmental Precursor of Adolescent Adjustment Problems
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Alexander T. Vazsonyi; Gabriela Ksinan Jiskrova; Ladislav Dušek; Jana Klánová
- Source
- Child Psychiatry & Human Development. 51:239-253
- Subject
- Male
050103 clinical psychology
Longitudinal study
Adolescent
Adjustment Disorders
Pregnancy
Risk Factors
Sleep quantity
Developmental and Educational Psychology
medicine
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Longitudinal Studies
Child
Latent growth modeling
05 social sciences
Infant
Chronotype
medicine.disease
Sleep in non-human animals
Psychiatry and Mental health
Child, Preschool
Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health
Female
Sleep
Psychology
050104 developmental & child psychology
Clinical psychology
- Language
- ISSN
- 1573-3327
0009-398X
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.