Learning process is a complex group
of factors that depends of genetic and environmental influences, and one of them
seems to be the chronotype, which is defined as a propensity of a person to
sleep at a particular time during a circadian period.
Even if is usual to believe that
habits can make a difference between students, since they learn to adapt their findings
from a chronobiology perspective highlight a deeper molecular accent into how
can humans can handle changes of light, from a evolutionary point of view. Life
on planet in general is sensible to changes called cycles. One of them is known
as Circadian rhythms.
Circadian rhythms are approximate
24-h biological cycles that prepares an organism for daily environmental changes,
driven by molecular clocks that basically are a trasncriptional-translational
feedback mechanism that involves the core clock genes in mammals and it is
present in virtually all cells of an organism 1.
Roenneberg, Kuehnle, Pramstaller,
Ricken, Havel, Guth, and Merrow2, explain that chronotype “depends
on genetic and environmental factors but also on age”, and at the same that some
other authors add gender to the landscape 3.
Chronotype changes with age, and
some researchers have found systematical differences between children and
adolescents, showing that children are early chronotypes and change slowly but progressively
until delay and reaching a maximum of diurnal preferences around the age of 20,
which suggests the end of adolescence3. However, the chronotype
will change again with increasing age.
Adolescents’ circadian clocks
typically run late4, they love to sleep until late and it’s easy to
believe this is related with a crazy nightlife. However, different studies shows that in fact,
these diurnal preferences can be something due circadian timing system. One
explanation leads to endocrine factors, since hormones begin to run around
adolescents systems for example studies how a time of day dependent of growth
hormones which reaches its maximum and cortisol a minimum at around 1 am2.
These changes are associated with
two different situations, one medical and one related with academic
performances.
From a medical perspective, aging is
associates with sleep problems, including earlier awakening and a decrease of
sleep patterns, mainly finding problems to consolidate sleep during the night5.
With this is mind is clear it can be
explained an academic situation that many students suffer: sleep difficulties
affect the way their learnings are consolidated. For example Pincher and
Walters7, studied the performance of 44 students who had to complete
the Watson-Glaser-Critical Thinking Appraisal after either 24 hours of sleep
deprivation or approximately 8 hours of sleep. In this study, after completing
the cognitive task, participants with sleep deprivation performed significantly
worse than the non-deprived participants. Other studies have found very similar
results even using different tests8-12.
All these studies show a relationship
between sleep and academic performance and most of studies have focused on
medicine students12 since they have the worst problems about
morningness-eveningness so it’s easy to see the influence on learning,
particularly of college students.
However, another issue must be add
to this puzzle, It seems there is a relationship between age and activities and
how they push to persons to create more and more gaps between sleep timing on
workdays and weekends which is knows as social
jetlag which can be described as
the discrepancy between work and free days, this means a difference between
social and biological time, leading to a considerable sleep debt 14.
The term social jetlag was coined in
2006 by researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, who
wanted to know the effects caused by differences between person’s internal
biological clocks and the social clock time.
This social jetlag has been of
course related with poor academic performances, and some studies like the one
conduced by Haraszti, Ella, Gyöngyösi, Roenneberg, and
Káldi15 suggests than circadian misalignment can have a significant
negative effect on academic performance and they suggest that this is socially
enforced.
Considering
all these factors, education has much more to considerate for a successful
environment to most of students. Late schedules to older students based on their chronotype, and of course personal
habits that can be broken easily with social activities effect how learning can
be performance.
References
1.
Harfmann, BD., Schroder, EA., Esser, KA. (2014) Circadian Rhythms, the
molecular clock, and skeletal muscle. Journal
of Biological Rhythms. 10.1177/0748730414561638
2.
Roenneberg,
T., Kuehnle, T., Pramstaller, PP., Ricken, J., Havel, M., Guth, A., Merrow, M.
(2004) A marker for the end of adolescence. Current
Biology, 14(24) R1038-R1039.
3.
Randle,
C. (2010) Age and gender differences in morningness-eveningness during
adolescence. Journal of Genetic
Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development, 172(3) 302-308.
4.
Van der Vinne, V., Zerbin, G., Siersemat, A., Pieper, A., Merrow, M.,
Hut, RA., Roenneberg, T., Kantermann, T. (2014) Timing examinations affects
school performance differently in early and ate chronotypes. Journal of
Biological Rhythms. 10.1177/0748730414564786
5.
Duffy,
J., Czeisler, CA. (2002) Age-related change in the relationship between
circadian period, circadian phase, and diurnal preference in humans. Neuroscience letters, 318(3) 117-120.
6.
Buboltz,
WC., Brown, F., Soper, B. (2001) Sleep habits and patters of college students:
A preliminary study. Journal of American
College Health, 50(3) 131-135
7.
Pincher,
JJ., & Walters, AS. (2007) How sleep deprivation affects psychological
variables related to college students’ cognitive performance. Journal of American College Health. 46
(3)121-126.
8.
Curcio,
G., Ferrara, M., De Gennaro, L.(2006) Sleep loss, learning capacity and
academic performance, Sleep Medicine
Reviews.10(5) 323-337.
9.
Woltson,
AR., Carskadon, MA. (2003) Understanding adolescent’s sleep patterns and school
performance: a critical appraisal. Sleep
Medicine Reviews 7(6) 491-506.
10.
Pilcher,
J., Ginter, DR., Sadowsky, B. (1997) Sleep quality versus sleep quantity:
Relationships between sleep and measures health, well-being and sleepiness in
college students. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 42(6)
583-596.
11.
Randler, C., & Frech, D. (2006) Correlation between
morningness-eveningness and final school leaving exams. Biological Rhythm Research, 37(3) 233-239.
12.
Medeiros, ALD., Mendes, DBF., Lima,
P., & Araujo, JF. (2001) The relationship between sleep-wake cycle and
academic performance in medical students. Biological
Rhythm Research, 32(2) 263-270.
13.
Haraszti, RA., Ella, K., Gyöngyösi,
N., Roenneberg, T., and Káldi, K. (2014) Social jetlag negatively correlates
with academic performance in undergraduates. Chronobiology International, 31(5) 603-612.
14.
Wittman,, M., Dinich, J., Merrow,
M., Roenneberg, T. (2006) Social Jetlag: Misalignment of biological and social
time. Chronobiology international, 23(2)
497-509.
15.
Haraszti, RA., Ella, K., Gyöngyösi,
N., Roenneberg, T., and Káldi, K. (2014) Social jetlag negatively correlates
with academic performance in undergraduates. Chronobiology International, 31(5) 603-612.
Note: All images were taken from internet