The relationships between sleep and aerobic fitness, intelligence, and cognitive abilities in preadolescent children was investigated in this research. Data from 483 children who were 8 - 9 years old were used to conduct correlational analyses. One parent of each participant completed a questionnaire pertaining to the typical amount of sleep received by the child participant. Each participant completed a maximal oxygen consumption test, a dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan, an Intelligence Test, achievement testing in reading, math, and spelling, and a modified flanker task to assess attentional inhibition. Greater amounts of sleep correlated with aerobic fitness (r=0.15, p≤0.001). Sleep correlated with body composition, measured via body mass index (BMI) (r=-0.15, p≤0.001) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) (r=-0.12, p=0.02). Sleep also correlated with crystallized intelligence (r=0.18, p≤0.001) and fluid intelligence (r=0.16, p≤0.001), as well as performance on reading (r=0.17, p≤0.001) and math (r=0.16, p=0.01) achievement tests. Spelling did not correlate with sleep (r=0.09, p>0.05). Greater amounts of sleep correlated with congruent flanker task accuracy (r=0.11, p=0.03) and reaction time (r=0.13, p=0.01). Finally, sleep correlated with incongruent flanker task accuracy (r=0.16, p≤0.001) and reaction time (r=0.13, p=0.01). These findings indicate a beneficial relationship of sleep with physical and cognitive health in children.

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