Diurnal rhythms in performance tests of school children with and without language disorders

Time-of-day related changes on four tests used by speech therapists and four other performance tests, in addition to oral temperature, were documented in 16 school children (7-9 years of age). Six of them had language disorders and were receiving speech therapy. Children were synchronized with diurnal activity from around 0730 to around 2100 and nocturnal rest. For each child, at each test time point (e.g. 0900, 1100, 1530 and 1930) tests were performed three times, with two different speech therapists, in a random order, with only one session per day. Conventional methods (t-tested mean differences; ANOVA; correlation tests) were used for statistical analyses. Among 29 parameters (items) which were analyzed, only nine exhibited time-of-day related changes, mainly in speed to-perform measures. In most detected rhythms best performance occurred either at 1100 or at 1530 with no difference in subgroups except for the fastest performance of the sentence repetition test. With regard to the daily mean M, controls performed better than children with language disorders for the word (syllabic) repetition test (P less than 0.0004) but this was reversed for both computing and colouring skill tests (P less than 0.04 and less than 0.002). A difference related to sex (but not to language disorders) was observed in the Ms of speed in sign reproduction (P less than 0.0000) and sorting cards (P less than 0.01), with boys being faster than girls. In children, as in adults, time-of-day effects should be considered when the quantification of performance is desired.