Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: María Florencia Coldeira | Email: florcoldeira@gmail.com
María Florencia Coldeira 1°, Diego Golombek 1°, Ignacio Spiousas 1°, Leandro Casiraghi 1°
1° Laboratorio Interdisciplinario del Tiempo (LITERA), Universidad de San Andrés.
Bedtime Procrastination (BP) is defined as the unnecessary and voluntary delay of bedtime, without a valid reason to explain this delay, along with the awareness that this action will have negative consequences for oneself. Previous studies have observed that this behavior is linked to negative sleep outcomes and is more prevalent in individuals with low self-control and later chronotypes (i.e. “late owls”). While the majority of research has focused on adults, BP might be particularly challenging in adolescents and young adults, as they often exhibit later chronotypes and the adolescents are still developing their self-control capacity. This study aims to examine the influence of BP on sleep and its relationship with psychological variables and chronotypes in highschool students and young adults. In a pilot study, 28 young adults completed an online questionnaire featuring validated scales for BP, general procrastination, sleep quality, chronotype, self-control and psychological distress. Participants tended to be nocturnal (45.8% were moderately owls) and displayed a moderately high level of BP (25.6±6 on a 9-45 points scale) which had a significant correlation with subjective sleep quality and sleep duration. Sleep quality also correlated with psychological distress. Besides that, general procrastination correlated with self-control values. Our preliminary results confirm that adequate solutions for better sleep are needed that address BP specifically in these populations.