Sex Differences in Temporal Sleep Patterns, Social Jetlag, and Attention in High School Adolescents

Abstract

Insufficient sleep and irregular sleep hours are common in adolescents, who experience a delayed sleep phase due to biopsychosocial changes associated with puberty, resulting in later sleep times. However, early morning class hours shorten sleep duration on weekdays. This condition is harmful to cognitive performance, which may be accentuated in girls due to a greater sleep need and less resistance to sleep deprivation. In this study, we evaluated sex differences concerning temporal sleep patterns, social jetlag, and attention in high school adolescents attending morning classes. Students ( n = 146 - F: 73-16.1 ± 0.8 years; M: 73-16.2 ± 0.9 years) completed a Health and Sleep questionnaire, kept a sleep diary for 10 days, which incorporated a Maldonado Sleepiness Scale, and performed a Continuous Performance Task. Girls went to bed earlier and woke up on weekends, and spent more time in bed at night and in 24 h on weekdays and weekends, while they also had a greater irregularity in wake-up times ( p < 0.05). There were no differences between sexes in terms of social jetlag, sleep debt, and sleepiness upon awakening ( p > 0.05). Regarding attention, the girls had a longer reaction time in phasic alertness ( p < 0.01) and a tendency to have fewer errors in selective attention ( p = 0.06). These results persisted when controlled for sleep parameters. Therefore, we suggest that girls have a greater sleep need and less resistance to sleep deprivation, while the differences in attention performance could be due to different strategies, the girls could be making a trade, increasing reaction time in favor of better accuracy, while the boys could be prioritizing a faster response time.

Keywords: adolescent behavior; attention; cognition; sleep deprivation; social jetlag.

Fig. 1

Means and std. errors of the attention components results in function of sex. A ) Reaction time of correct responses; B ) Percentage of correct responses; C ) Percentage of incorrect responses; D ) Percentage of omissions; E ) General stability (standard deviation of the reaction time of correct responses). * p  < 0,05; ** p  < 0,01; # p  > 0,05 and ≤ 0,10.