Relationship between cognitive functions and prevalence of fatigue in elementary and junior high school students.
BACKGROUND
Fatigue is a common complaint among elementary and junior high school students, and is related to poor academic performance. Since grade-dependent development of cognitive functions also influences academic performance, we attempted to determine whether cognitive functions were associated with the prevalence of fatigue.


METHODS
Participants were 148 elementary school students from 4th- to 6th-grades and 152 junior high school students from 7th- to 9th-grades. Participants completed a questionnaire about fatigue (Japanese version of the Chalder Fatigue Scale) and paper-and-pencil and computerized cognitive tests which could evaluate the abilities of motor processing, immediate, delayed and working memory, selective, divided and alternative attention, retrieve learned material, and spatial construction.


RESULTS
We found that in multivariate logistic regression analyses adjusted for grade and gender, slow motor processing was positively correlated with the prevalence of fatigue in the elementary school students and decreases in working memory and divided and alternative attention processing were positively correlated with the prevalence of fatigue in the junior high school students.


CONCLUSIONS
The grade-dependent development of cognitive function influences the severity of fatigue in elementary and junior high school students.
Mizuno
Kei
K
Department of Physiology, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-4-3 Asahimachi, Abeno-ku, Osaka 545-8585, Japan. keimizuno@riken.jp
Tanaka
Masaaki
M
Fukuda
Sanae
S
Imai-Matsumura
Kyoko
K
Watanabe
Yasuyoshi
Y
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004522:Educational Status; D005221:Fatigue / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012574:Schools; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires