Changing sleep patterns affect cognition in college students

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Deviation from typical sleep pattern was found to affect daily metacognition in college students, according to a poster presented at the SLEEP meeting.

Knowing metacognition has been associated with academic outcomes in college students, Amy Costa, a graduate student in psychological sciences at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and colleagues sought to understand the impact of daily sleep patterns.

Eighty-one college students (64 women) completed sleep diaries for 1 week, recording total sleep time (TST), sleep onset latency (SOL), number of nighttime awakenings and wake after sleep onset (WASO), according to the poster. They also tracked their quality of morning mental functioning, rating it from 0 (poor) to 100 (very good).

“I found the average level of sleep parameter is not significant,” Costa told Healio in an interview. “If individuals sleep less than their average, they report less metacognition than their average. If they sleep more, they have better metacognition.”

In addition, students who woke more often throughout the night and had greater WASO reported worse metacognitive ratings.

“Deviation in individual sleep pattern has a definite effect on cognition,” Costa said.

The researchers suggested research into sleep interventions that could improve metacognition and, in turn, improve academic outcomes.