Interplay of chronotype and school timing predicts school performance

ANDREA P. GOLDIN; MARIANO SIGMAN; GISELA BRAIER; DIEGO A GOLOMBEK; MARÍA JULIANA LEONE

Nature Human Behaviour

Springer Nature Group

Año: 2020

Adolescents have very late chronotypes although typically attend school early in the morning, affecting health and psychological variables. Here we examine how the interaction between chronotype and school timing influences academic performance, studying a unique sample of 753 Argentinian students randomly assigned to start school in the morning (07:45am), afternoon (12:40pm) or evening (05:20pm). While chronotypes are partially aligned with class time, this is insufficient to account for the differences related to school start time. Morning-attending students exhibit high social jetlag and short sleep duration. Moreover, we show that 1) for morning-attending students, early chronotypes perform better than late chronotypes in all school subjects, although Math is more affected than Language, 2) this effect disappears in students attending school in the afternoon, 3) late chronotypes benefit from evening classes, outperforming early types. We demonstrate that academic performance is higher when school times are better aligned with adolescents biological rhythms.p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; line-height: 120%; text-align: left; }p.western { font-family: "Calibri", serif; font-size: 11pt; }p.cjk { font-size: 11pt; }a:link { color: rgb(0, 0, 255); }