- Submitted by:
- Kerry Morrison
Convent of the Sacred Heart, Greenwich, CT, USA
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- Teacher:
- Mary Musolino
- Reviewers:
- Tim Brice, Sundaram Srinivasa, Nathaly Famiglietti
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A lack of sufficient sleep is a rampant problem among adolescents today. The effects of
sleep deprivation entail the disruption of an individual’s circadian rhythm. The circadian timing
system is the internal mechanism or pacemaker that organizes daily biological processes in
mammals. The brain’s circadian timing system switches on later at night as pubertal
development progresses. These changes in adolescents’ circadian timing systems produce a
pattern of early-morning sleepiness in students. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess how
waking alertness is influenced by circadian phase preference in adolescents who are Morning or
Evening types. More specifically, the goal is to take advantage of contemporary measurement
tools and theoretical constructs to examine the regulation of diurnal sleep tendency during
adolescent development in the contexts of nominal and restricted nocturnal sleep and determine:
1) If age is associated with Morning/Evening score; 2) If Tanner stage is associated with
Morning/Evening score; 3) If Sleepiness Scale after optimized sleep is less than Sleepiness Scale
after restricted sleep; 4) If sleepiness after acute and prolonged restricted sleep is greater in older
adolescents than younger adolescents. Most significantly, the results of this study indicate the
interesting relationship between age and sleepiness after periods of acute and prolonged
restricted sleep.
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