From Michigan State University
November 21, 2019 - EAST LANSING, Mich.
- Michigan State University's Sleep and Learning Lab has conducted one of the
largest sleep studies to date, revealing that sleep deprivation affects us much
more than prior theories have suggested.
Published in the Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, the research is not only one of the
largest studies, but also the first to assess how sleep deprivation impacts
placekeeping - or, the ability to complete a series of steps without losing one's
place, despite potential interruptions. This study builds on prior research
from MSU's sleep scientists to quantify the effect lack of sleep has on a
person's ability to follow a procedure and maintain attention.
"Our research showed that sleep
deprivation doubles the odds of making placekeeping errors and triples the
number of lapses in attention, which is startling," Fenn said.
"Sleep-deprived individuals need to exercise caution in absolutely
everything that they do, and simply can't trust that they won't make costly
errors. Oftentimes - like when behind the wheel of a car - these errors can
have tragic consequences."
By sharing their findings on the
separate effects sleep deprivation has on cognitive function, Fenn - and
co-authors Michelle Stepan, MSU doctoral candidate and Erik Altmann, professor
of psychology - hope that people will acknowledge how significantly their
abilities are hindered because of a lack of sleep.
"Our findings debunk a common
theory that suggests that attention is the only cognitive function affected by
sleep deprivation," Stepan said. "Some sleep-deprived people might be
able to hold it together under routine tasks, like a doctor taking a patient's
vitals. But our results suggest that completing an activity that requires
following multiple steps, such as a doctor completing a medical procedure, is
much riskier under conditions of sleep deprivation."
The researchers recruited 138 people to
participate in the overnight sleep assessment; 77 stayed awake all night and 61
went home to sleep. All participants took two separate cognitive tasks in the
evening: one that measured reaction time to a stimulus; the other measured a
participant's ability to maintain their place in a series of steps without
omitting or repeating a step - even after sporadic interruptions. The
participants then repeated both tasks in the morning to see how
sleep-deprivation affected their performance.
"After being interrupted there was
a 15% error rate in the evening and we saw that the error rate spiked to about
30% for the sleep-deprived group the following morning," Stepan said.
"The rested participants' morning scores were similar to the night before.
"There are some tasks people can do
on auto-pilot that may not be affected by a lack of sleep," Fenn said.
"However, sleep deprivation causes widespread deficits across all facets
of life."
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