From the Michigan State University press release:<\/p>\n
\nMichigan 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
\nPublished in the\u00a0Journal of Experimental Psychology: General<\/em><\/strong>, the research is not only one of the largest studies, but also the first to assess how sleep deprivation impacts placekeeping<\/strong> — 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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