VIRTUALLY ALL METHODS OF EXAMINING THE EF- FECTS OF SLEEP PROBLEMS ON COGNITION HAVE LED TO THE CONCLUSION THAT SLEEP PROBLEMS OR sleep loss result in cognitive impairment. Cognitive decrements

323 VIRTUALLY ALL METHODS OF EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF SLEEP PROBLEMS ON COGNITION HAVE LED TO THE CONCLUSION THAT SLEEP PROBLEMS OR sleep loss result in cognitive impairment. Cognitive decrements have been found in studies of sleep loss or sleep fragmentation arising from environmental factors such as job demands1; primary sleep disorders such as insomnia, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea2; sleep quality and duration3; and experimentally manipulated deprivation or restriction.4,5 Pilcher and Huffcutt,4 in their meta-analysis of 19 studies, found that sleep deprived individuals performed, on average, 1.55 standard deviations below nondeprived individuals on cognitive tasks. These cognitive consequences of sleep deprivation are not isolated to extreme cases.5,6 For example, Van Dongen et al.6 found that the effects of sleep loss on cognitive functioning can be cumulative, such that even moderate sleep restriction (e.g., sleep ≤ 6 h/night) over the course of 2 weeks can result in cognitive deficits equivalent to those found with up to 2 nights of total sleep deprivation. The majority of the evidence for cognitive deficits with sleep problems/deprivation comes from studies incorporating only one time point or very close time points. Also of interest is the association of early general sleep problems and their developmental trajectories with later cognitive abilities. There is some reason to hypothesize that such developmental patterns may be important: for example, Gregory and colleagues7,8 found that sleep problems at earlier ages and/or stability of sleep problems predicted behavioral and emotional problems at later ages. Touchette et al.9 found that patterns of persistent short sleep duration or increasing tendency for short sleep duration in early childhood (2.5 to 6 years) predicted externalizing problems as well as performance on neurodevelopmental tests at ages 5 to 6. However, to our knowledge, little to no information exists on the cognitive sequelae of different developmental patterns of general sleep problems through adolescence. In this study, we used longitudinal data on parent-reported sleep problems about children from ages 4 years to 16 years to investigate whether different trajectories of general sleep problems throughout development are related to cognitive functioning in late adolescence (~age 17). The particular cognitive abilities on which we focus are executive functions—general-purpose control mechanisms, often neurologically associated with the frontal lobes, that modulate various cognitive subprocesses and thereby regulate one’s thoughts and actions. Several researchers have suggested that executive functions may be particularly sensitive to sleep problems or sleep loss, because of the apparent influence of sleep problems on prefrontal cortex functioning.10-15 Although it is still an open question whether executive functions are more affected by sleep problems than abilities thought to depend less on the frontal lobes, existing research does provide some evidence, albeit inconsistent, for impairments on executive function tasks related to sleep deprivation or sleep problems such as sleep apnea.3,10-12,15 However, the bulk of this evidence relies on results obtained with complex “frontal lobe” tasks or individual executive measures. There are 2 main limitations with the use Sleep problemS in Childhood and adoleSCenCe