Season of birth and sleep-timing preferences in adolescents

The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between season of birth and sleep-timing preferences in adolescence. To this end, the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (MEQ-CA) was administered to 1912 adolescents (1058 females and 854 males), ranging in age between 10 and 17 yrs. To assess preferred sleep habits, the authors considered the answers to the open-ended questions of the MEQ-CA (items 1 and 2), regarding the preferred arising time and the preferred going to bed time. Combining the answers to these two questions, the authors also indirectly computed the preferred sleep duration and preferred midpoint of sleep. Season of birth did not significantly modulate the overall MEQ-CA score; however, spring-born participants preferred to go to bed and reached the preferred midpoint of sleep later than those born in autumn. Agreeing with a previous study on young adults, the present data point to a significant season-of-birth effect on the two parameters of the sleep-timing preferences in adolescents.