Introduction:

Sleep habits are behaviors that favor sleep. Sleep is fundamental for the development of children, given the physiological restoration processes of the organism that occur during it. Inadequate sleep habits can lead to difficulties in various cognitive processes, like memory and attention.

Objective:

To analyze the relationship between sleep habits, memory and attention processes in children of elementary school.

Methods:

52 children (22 girls and 30 boys) were assessed, 34 in the morning and 18 in the afternoon shift. Parents answered the Children's sleep habits questionnaire, which rates sleep habits of the week before the assessment. Auditory and visual memory and attention were measured with the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil and working memory was measured with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The amount of time children watched television before bed time, the study shift, and the socioeconomic level were documented as psychosocial factors.

Results:

There were inadequate sleep habits in 80% of children; on average, during school days children slept 9 h and 11 h on weekends. Negative correlations were found between inadequate sleep habits and auditory encoding, auditory attention and watching television before bed time.

Conclusions:

Inadequate sleep habits in interaction with other biopsychosocial factors, such as sleeping less than recommended hours, may be associated with poor performance in memory and attention processes in school children.

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