Relief...contre la planéité

La condition caractéristique du rêve, c’est le sommeil. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Un enfant nécessite plus de sommeil qu’un adulte, de 10 à 11 heures à l’âge scolaire. Souvent astreints à des journées plus éreintantes que leurs parents, plusieurs manquent de sommeil. Aussi, les chercheurs s’intéressent de plus en plus aux conséquences de ce déficit sur l’éducation. Cette année, le congrès de l’Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) apporte son lot de nouvelles études, dont une corrélation entre le sommeil et les résultats en littératie et mathématiques.

Voici les études pertinentes issues du congrès 2007 de l’APSS, en plus de quelques autres tirées de mes archives :

• Physorg : Children with sleep disorder symptoms are more likely to have trouble academically. “Students with symptoms of sleep disorders are more likely to receive bad grades in classes such as math, reading and writing than peers without symptoms of sleep disorders.”

• EurekAlert! : Sleep disturbances affect classroom performance. “As a night of bad sleep can have an adverse effect on an adult’s performance at work the next day, an insufficient amount of rest can also have a negative impact on how well middle or high school students perform in the classroom.”

• EurekAlert! : Going to bed late may affect the health, academic performance of college students. “College students who go to bed late are more likely to have poor quality sleep, which may affect their mental health and academic performance.”

• EurekAlert! : Late weekend sleep among teens may lead to poor academic performance. “Teenagers who stay up late on school nights and make up for it by sleeping late on weekends are more likely to perform poorly in the classroom. This is because, on weekends, they are waking up at a time that is later than their internal body clock expects.”

• EurekAlert! : College students who pull ‘all-nighters’ and get no sleep more likely to have a lower GPA. “A common practice among many college students involves « pulling all-nighters », or a single night of total sleep deprivation, a practice associated with lower grade-point averages compared to those who make time for sleep.”

• EurekAlert! : Children’s brain responses predict impact of sleep loss on attention. “The brain responses of those children who don’t get enough sleep can accurately predict the impact sleep loss has on their ability to pay attention during the course of a day.”

• EurekAlert! : Sleep restriction affects children’s speech. “Sleep restriction can alter children’s initial stages of speech perception, which could contribute to disruptions in cognitive and linguistic functioning – skills necessary for reading and language development and comprehension.”

• EurekAlert! : Sleep Slide-Rule improves children’s understanding of the importance of sleep. “Over the past decade, children have been going to bed later and sleeping less. This can be attributed, in part, to a lack of awareness in the community concerning sleep need in children and how the amount of sleep a child should get each night is dependent on one’s age. The Sleep-Side Rule is found to be an effective classroom tool that improves children’s understanding of the relationship between age and sleep need.”

• EurekAlert! : Children who sleep less more likely to be overweight. “Research indicates that getting inadequate sleep has negative effects on children’s social and emotional well-being and school performance. Now a Northwestern University study finds it also increases their risk of being overweight.”

• EurekAlert! : Children’s sleep problems can lead to school problems. “It is obvious that young children who have difficulties sleeping are likely to have problems in school. A new study shows that African-American children and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fare worse than their counterparts when their sleep is disrupted.”

• EurekAlert! : Research finds poor sleep affects student’s school performance. “Disturbed sleep in school children negatively affects their school performance and various neurocognitive abilities.”

• EurekAlert! : The science of lost sleep in teens. “Sleeping in class, lack of energy to exercise, feelings of depression, and driving while drowsy as only some of the consequences for insufficient sleep.”

Mise à jour, 25 juin 2007 | Ceci dévie un peu du sujet, mais mérite qu’on le signale en raison de notre fascination pour la culture japonaise : Alain Côté donne quelques détails d’une étude sur les heures de sommeil des écoliers au Japon. Je suis particulièrement ébahi de la quantité d’élèves qui vont au lit après minuit!

Mise à jour, 5 juillet 2007 | L’émission de télé Science Now présente un dossier intéressant sur le sommeil, incluant des ressources en ligne.

(Image thématique : Flaming June, par Frederic Leighton)

Par ricochet :

Quand l’école prive les jeunes de sommeil

Ces enfants qu’on presse comme des citrons