Educational and Psychological Implications of Sleep Habits and Technology Usage: Inattention and Controlled Behaviors

Abstract

Assessment of education and learning in formal contexts often underestimated the effect of the sleep variable. The sleep behavior and the chronotype of adolescents are important to understand the causes of failure in specific academic tasks, but also affecting classroom behaviors. The chronotype characterizes individuals according to their sleep habits and their preference and willingness to perform their tasks at specific times of the day. Adolescents tend to be evening type contrary to the morningness profile. Evidence supports that evening adolescents will perform better in late schedules. Besides schedules and traditional educational methods, technology-based and digital education are important to comprehend how evening individuals could compensate their cognitive phase during early hours. Two Portuguese empirical studies were compared concerning the educational outputs and the use of technologies attending certain periods of the day. A theoretical framework will be presented grounded by results gathered from the two research studies. This theory evidence based will help to contribute to a better understanding sleep habits and exposure to screens in pubescent population.