Lower school performance in late chronotypes: underlying factors and mechanisms

作者：Giulia Zerbini, Vincent van der Vinne, Lana Otto, Thomas Kantermann, Wim P. Krijnen, Till Roenneberg, Martha Merrow · 发表于：Scientific Reports · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1038/s41598-017-04076-y · 被引用次数：70 · 研究领域：Sleep and related disorders、Cognitive Abilities and Testing、Early Childhood Education and Development

Abstract Success at school determines future career opportunities. We described a time-of-day specific disparity in school performance between early and late chronotypes. Several studies showed that students with a late chronotype and short sleep duration obtain lower grades, suggesting that early school starting times handicap their performance. How chronotype, sleep duration, and time of day impact school performance is not clear. At a Dutch high school, we collected 40,890 grades obtained in a variety of school subjects over an entire school year. We found that the strength of the effect of chronotype on grades was similar to that of absenteeism, and that late chronotypes were more often absent. The difference in grades between the earliest 20% and the latest 20% of chronotypes corresponds to a drop from the 55 th to 43 rd percentile of grades. In academic subjects using mainly fluid cognition (scientific subjects), the correlation with grades and chronotype was significant while subjects relying on crystallised intelligence (humanistic/linguistic) showed no correlation with chronotype. Based on these and previous results, we can expand our earlier findings concerning exam times: students with a late chronotype are at a disadvantage in exams on scientific subjects, and when they are examined early in the day.