Does sleep habits affect the learning of school children?

Background: Learning difficulty is relevant in childhood and it is associated with many factors. Since sleep is vitally important for child development and it is one of the a little unknown factors, when combined with learning difficulty and development of children with specific functional disorder treated at Specialist Educational Service Rooms - SESR, however, not many people know about the factors associated with learning difficulty and sleep habits within a generic sample of children attending school supporting rooms. To characterize the cognitive profile and sleeping habits of 7 to 12 year-old-children. The list of associated factors of 70 children of elementary school with some kind of specific functional disorder (Dyslexia / Dysorthographia / Dysgraphia / Dyscalculia / Disorder Attention Deficit (with or without hyperactivity) - 16 schools: 04 schools in the east side, 04 schools in the north side, 03 schools in the southeast side and 05 schools in the south side. Sleep characteristics were evaluated by questionnaire sleep habits and cognitive profile through psychological tests SDT - School Development Test and CNRT - Child Nonverbal Reasoning Test. The data of the answers of the children were checked and tabulated using SPSS -Statistical Package for Social Sciences program. In evaluated children, the determinants showed a lower level in relation to school performance test. The nonverbal test was negatively associated and did not detect correlations between sleep variables and test result scores. Sleep is not the main factor associated with learning difficulty and that there is no association between sleep habits and cognitive assessment of children enrolled in the Specialized Educational Service Rooms –SESR.