ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 has provided a good introduction to the notion that sleep shows
dramatic progressions as a function of development. Indeed, as young people
pass into and through adolescence, sleep behaviors as well as underlying regu-
latory processes continue to manifest significant reworking. For example, in a
report of the longitudinal progression of children’s sleep durations reported by
mothers of Swiss children across the first decade and one-half of life (1), a
decline in hours of sleep extends into the 16th year. This paper also showed an
interesting cohort effect in which sleep time was significantly reduced across
cohorts that began the study in 1974, 1979, and 1986; however, this cohort effect
was greater for young children than for adolescents. Nevertheless, the issue of
temporal cohort (likely combined with cultural impact) may account for dif-
ferences between the Swiss data and a newer U.S.-based data set, in which
reported sleep times are significantly lower than reported in the Swiss data. The
National Sleep Foundation 2006 Sleep in America Poll surveyed approximately
1600 adolescents and caregivers (2). Table 1 lists the nocturnal sleep data
reported in this poll of U.S. children (ca. November, 2005) aged 11 to 17 years.
Comparing the hours of reported sleep on school nights with the maternal reports
of Swiss adolescents, the mean nocturnal sleep of the U.S. adolescents falls near
the 2nd to 10th percentiles. This contrast highlights potential cultural differences
as well as those that may accrue to contemporary social conditions.
