Poster #108 - Kindergarten-transition academic and social-emotional readiness and 8-year mental health symptoms: The moderating role of sleep duration

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Kindergarten readiness—early reading and math skills, self-regulation, and social competence—is important for academic achievement, relationships, and engagement (Blair & Raver, 2015; Ricciardi et al., 2021); nonetheless, whether readiness is associated with other developmental facets, including mental health symptoms, is understudied. Moreover, despite well-established health benefits of sleep across developmental domains (Teti et al., 2022), models testing moderation by sleep in these associations are rare. Examining varying sleep durations, in particular, for students who enter school less-ready than peers, is warranted, given poor sleep may exacerbate (or adequate sleep may protect against) disparities and help explicate adjustment differences (El-Sheikh et al., 2022).

Using multiple reporters and methods across years with a state-wide twin sample, we tested whether children’s kindergarten-transition readiness was associated with 8-year internalizing, externalizing, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. Because evidence generally links social-emotional, but not academic, skills to mental health symptoms, we were unsure of relative prediction of academic versus social-emotional readiness in a comprehensive model; we anticipated stronger magnitudes for social-emotional readiness when tested simultaneously. We also explored differential patterns according to 8-year sleep duration, expecting stronger associations between readiness and outcomes for children with shorter sleep durations than for those with longer sleep durations.

Participants included 769 children (51% girls, M=8.42 years, 24% Hispanic/Latino, 59% White) and their primary caregivers (N=387, 30% below the poverty line, based on income-to-needs data) and teachers. Prior to kindergarten entry, parents rated academic and social-emotional kindergarten readiness (effortful control, prosocial behavior; see Table Note for additional information). At the 8-year assessment, parents and teachers rated internalizing, externalizing, and ADHD mental health symptoms, and twins wore actigraph watches across one week (Mnights=6.83, SD=0.62) that assessed sleep duration.

We estimated a multilevel path model using the “type=twolevel random” command (family=cluster variable) in Mplus 8 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017) to examine (a) main effects linking readiness to teacher- or parent-reported mental health symptoms and (b) moderated effects by sleep duration, accounting for children’s sex, age, race/ethnicity, preschool attendance, and family socioeconomic status.

Academic readiness was positively associated with teacher-reported externalizing symptoms. Social-emotional readiness was consistently negatively associated with all outcomes across reporters. Sleep duration was a significant moderator of associations between academic readiness and teacher-reported internalizing or ADHD symptoms and between social-emotional readiness and parent-reported internalizing symptoms (Table 1).

Plots indicated links between academic readiness and teacher-reported internalizing (or ADHD) symptoms were strongest at short sleep durations (Figure 1, Panel A). The association between social-emotional readiness and parent-reported internalizing symptoms was strongest for children with long sleep durations (Panel B).

Novel associations linking kindergarten-readiness to 8-year mental health symptoms, with differential patterns by concurrent sleep, extend existing work linking readiness to achievement and implicate dynamics among academic and bioregulatory processes in early elementary years. Associations were particularly apparent involving teacher-reported outcomes; teachers may be especially attuned to behavioral challenges among students lacking in readiness or adequate sleep. Fostering healthy sleep in elementary school, in addition to promoting academic, emotional, and interpersonal competence, appears important for mental health and adjustment.

Authors

• Jodi Swanson, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Samantha Miadich, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Rebecca E. Myers, Arizona State University

• Leah D Doane, Arizona State University

• Mary Davis, Arizona State University

• Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Arizona State University