Impact of Short and Mistimed Sleep on Adolescents With ADHD: The Adolescent Attention and Circadian Timing Study

Conditions

• ADHD

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

ALL

Age

13 Years - 17 Years

Healthy Volunteers

Not accepted

Interventions

• Aligned sleep extension — BEHAVIORAL
  Timing of extended sleep condition is randomly assigned to fit with participant's chronotype
• Misaligned sleep extension — BEHAVIORAL
  Timing of extended sleep condition is randomly assigned to fit poorly with participant's chronotype

Study Details

Many adolescents go to bed late and wake up early for school. Science is only beginning to understand how sleep schedules can affect them. The investigators are interested in whether changing adolescents' sleep patterns affects their functioning, attention, and how they feel. The investigators are especially interested in the effects of changing both how much sleep adolescents get and when that sleep happens. This study focuses on healthy 13-17-year-olds with ADHD. This study asks adolescents to systematically change their sleeping habits across a 3 week span. The first week, they follow a sleep schedule that fits reasonably well with the schedule they keep when they do not have to wake up early for any specific obligation (e.g., for school). The second week, they spend several nights in a "short sleep" condition, during which they get 6.5 hours in bed per night. The final week, they enter a sleep condition that allows for healthy sleep duration, but with a timing that is randomly assigned to either fit well with their preferred schedule or fit poorly with that schedule. During each week, they and their parents complete measures of their attention and other factors. At the end of each week, they attend an evening session to measure their internal body clock ("circadian phase"), as well as measures of attention and other thinking skills. The goal is to understand whether the benefits of healthy sleep duration depend on the timing of when that sleep occurs.

Key Dates

Start date

Jul 31, 2026

Status verified

Jun 2026

Primary completion

Aug 31, 2030

Completion

Aug 31, 2030

Study Design

Enrollment

50 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

FACTORIAL

Primary purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Arms

• Experimental: Aligned Sleep Extension
  One of two variants on the timing of period of when there is an opportunity to get healthy/recommended sleep duration. Aligned sleep extension allows 9.5 hours/night in bed in a manner that broadly fits with an adolescent's chronotype (e.g., early-to-bed and early-to-rise schedule for a morning lark).
• Experimental: Misaligned Sleep Extension
  One of two variants on the timing of period of when there is an opportunity to get healthy/recommended sleep duration. Aligned sleep extension allows 9.5 hours/night in bed in a manner that is broadly a poor fit with an adolescent's chronotype (e.g., early-to-bed and early-to-rise schedule for a night owl).

Primary Outcome Measure

Caregiver- and Adolescent-Reported Symptoms of Inattention [ Time Frame: Daily throughout each participant's involvement in the study, up to 3 weeks ]

Central Contacts

• Dean Beebe, Ph.D
  513-636-3489
  [email protected]
• Stephen Becker, Ph.D.

Locations (1)

Find similar trials in Cincinnati, OH

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