Morningness-Eveningness

Central aims:

1. To study the Portuguese version of the Children Chronotype Questionnaire for Children (CCTQ) of Werner, LeBourgeois, Geiger and Jenni (2009) in a national sample of preschool and primary school children, aged 4 to 11 years-old, in order to obtain a reliable and valid instrument to measure diurnal type/chronotype (morningness-eveningness);
2. To study the influence of chronotype (morningness-eveningness), and time of the day, on primary school children’s performance in standardized psychoeducational measures used for assessing reading and writing skills and to inform diagnostic decisions regarding impairment of these skills. That is, we sought to determine whether the congruence versus incongruence between children chronotype and time-of-the-day has an effect on the performance scores of the children tested.

Main general conclusions:

• I part/aim of the project: the Portuguese version of the CCTQ is a reliable and valid questionnaire to estimate chronotypes and in particular morningnesss-eveningness (diurnal type) in children. Besides, this Portuguese study contribute to the knowledge about children morningness-eveningness, given the large sample size collected and the available data to characterize 9-11 years old pubertal children too (in addition to non-pubertal ones).

• II part/aim of the project: children performance in standardized measures used in psychoeducational assessments of reading/writing competencies/difficulties, and school learning skills, might be affected by time of day depending on their diurnal type. However, our results show that the relationships between diurnal type and time of day are far more complex than the initial simplistic supposition that better performance would be achieved in the optimal time. Therefore, for the moment, no specific recommendation seems to be possible regarding our initial concern on whether test norms should take into account children diurnal type. In reality, non-optimal times might eventually favour performances in specific tasks.

Our results suggest that studies concerned with synchrony effects should anticipate asynchrony findings, and should consider also the nature of the tasks, as the combined effects of diurnal type and time of day seem to be highly variable depending on specific cognitive processes and demands involved. In conclusion, our results in school children raised new research questions and hypothesis that deserve further investigation.