Greater social jetlag predicts poorer NIH Toolbox crystallized cognitive and academic performance in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study

ABSTRACT

Academic performance plays a crucial role in long-term educational attainment and occupational function. Chronotype refers to an individual’s daily tendencies for times for waking, activity, and sleep. Social jetlag reflects the mismatch between an individual’s chronotype and their social schedule. Because school typically starts early in the morning, later chronotype is often associated with daytime sleepiness, insufficient sleep, and poor academic performance. However, the relationship between academic performance, chronotype, and social jetlag has not been extensively examined in large samples like the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. We hypothesized that greater social jetlag would predict poorer cognitive and academic performance. Year 2 (ages 11–14) cross-sectional data from the ABCD cohort (n = 6,890 adolescents) were used to evaluate academic performance (i.e. self-reported past year grades), NIH Toolbox cognitive performance measures, chronotype, and social jetlag from the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire. We found that later chronotype and greater social jetlag predicted poorer cognitive and academic performance with small effect sizes. Our findings emphasize the importance of individual differences in chronotype and social jetlag when designing class schedules, as aligning school activities with student optimal sleep-wake times may contribute to improved academic performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronotype
• academic performance
• cognitive performance
• social jetlag
• adolescence
• ABCD

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD; https://abcdstudy.org) study provided data for the work completed and is funded by the National Institutes of Health under grants U01DA041022, U01DA041028, U01DA041048, U01DA041089, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041120, U01DA041134, U01DA041148, U01DA041156, U01DA041174, U24DA041123, and U24DA041147.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2024.2353848.

Additional information

Funding

This work was made possible by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant that supports Alejandro Meruelo, MD, PhD (K23 AA026869) and the VA grant that funds Michael McCarthy (VA Merit Award BX003431).