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May 10, 2026SLEEP0 citations

0276 Age but Not Sex Differences in the Discrepancies Between Objective and Subjective Assessments of Sleep

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WWW WangDCDaniel CohenCCCharles Czeisler

Key Points

  • This research investigates whether age or sex influences the accuracy of self-reported sleep assessments among healthy individuals.
  • Analyzed data from 90 younger and 24 older participants over baseline and forced desynchrony conditions.
  • Compared self-reported sleep measures to polysomnography (PSG) recordings using linear mixed-effects models.
  • Assessed variables included sleep latency, number of awakenings, total sleep time, and habitual versus chronic sleep restriction.
  • Participants consistently overestimated sleep latency and underestimated number of awakenings during baseline and forced desynchrony.
  • No significant differences in self-assessment accuracy were found between men and women.
  • Older participants had smaller differences in perceived latency for short sleeps but larger discrepancies for longer sleep latencies.

Abstract

Abstract Introduction We tested whether sex and/or age affected accuracy of self-report sleep metrics in healthy people. Methods Data are from 90 male and 49 female Younger participants (18-34 years) and 14 male and 10 female Older participants (55-74 years). All participants were healthy with no medical, psychological or sleep disorders and free of medications; some were also screened for sleep disorders using clinical PSG. Inpatient schedules included baseline (BL, 24-hr days, 331 sleep recordings) and forced desynchrony (FD; 20.0, 28.0 or 42.85 hr “days”; 2471 sleep recordings) with habitual (1:2 sleep:wake) or chronic sleep restriction (CSR; 1:3.3 sleep:wake) ratios. Circadian period and phase from FD segments were calculated using core body temperature. Items from a post-sleep questionnaire administered shortly after scheduled awakening about sleep latency, number of awakenings (NWAKE), total sleep time (TST), and duration of awakening before lights on (FINALWAKE) were compared to PSG-recorded sleep for that sleep episode. Linear mixed-effects models were used to quantify the relationships between the differences between objective and subjective sleep measures and factors such as age, sex, and other potential covariates (prior wake duration, the amount of each stage of sleep, the number and duration of bouts of each stage of sleep, and the Habitual/CSR condition) during both BL and FD sections. Results During BL, participants overestimated latency to NREM S1 sleep (~6 min) and FINALWAKE (~8 min).) and underestimated NWAKE (~ 4 counts). When adjusted for other factors, there were no age or sex differences. During FD, participants overestimated latency to NREM S1 sleep (~7 min) and underestimated NWAKE (~5 count). When adjusted for other factors, there were no sex differences. For sleep latency, Older participants, compared to Younger participants, had smaller differences for short objective latencies ( 15 min) and a larger differences for long objective latencies (≥15 min). Conclusion There were no differences between women and men in the accuracy of their self-assessed sleep latency, NWAKE, TST, or FINAL WAKE. There were age-related differences only in some sleep latency metrics. Future work should compare subjective vs objective measures in people with sleep (e.g., insomnia) and other disorders Support (if any) NIH, NASA, NSBRI, US AFOSR, BWH, Euclock

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Cite This Study

Wang et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a0021b7c8f74e3340f9c930https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsag091.0276
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Also Consider

Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context:

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