Evaluation of Sources Addressing Sleep and Performance Essay

Thesis: Sleep plays an essential part in a person’s health and well-being; the way we feel while awake is dependent upon what happens to your body while asleep.

There are a few factors that are essential for life such as breathing or eating, but one of the most essential factor is sleep. Even though the amount of sleep people need differs from one individual to another, the fact is that eventually everyone needs to sleep. People know the importance of sleep, but due to the increased workload and the pressure of society people are getting less sleep. As a result, there has been an increase interest on the effects lack of sleep has on the mind especially the memory of a person. Many questions arose about the relationship between sleep and memory due to the fact most high school and college students have become sleep deprived. For example, does more sleep mean higher grades?

In the article Teachers,Students and Sleep, author Dave Stuart address the effects of different qualities of sleep have on students. Stuart covers the causes for poor sleep and the consequences this can have. The author repeatedly references the work of Harvard graduate Maria Konnikova, along with Shawn Stevenson who has a bachelor's degree, thus they appear to be reliable sources. Stuart cover the negative effects of artificial light close to sleep, and the many positive effects of regularity in other activities on the sleep cycle. Dave Stuart makes his readers reevaluate how important sleep is.

One of the many arising problems of America’s students is they are becoming sleep deprived. The busy daily schedules of children and teens are not allowing them to get enough sleep. “Less sleep is unhealthy especially with the new research that as teenagers move through teenage years, they need increasing amounts of sleep. Nine hours per night is the necessary amount to avoid behaviors associated with sleep deprivation” (Final Report Summary, 2001). Among other things, sleep deprivation is causing students to sleep during class instead of being awake and aware. When the students are sleeping in class, they are not retaining information being taught to them. Researchers have now proven that

Students are in search of an advantage over the crowd and go to vast lengths to achieve it. Sleep deprived students are the effect of high expectations. Schools such as Silicon Valley brought sleep experts to promote shut-eye. Frank Bruni states that back when he was in the 1980s, there was too much sleep, although today’s students are taking more AP classes, multiple extracurricular, and apply to every Ivies. The author lists numerous books written on the topic of student learning. In college, campus students face anxiety along with depression, they cope with minor setbacks that seem big. They also deal with panic a major factor in “acing the exam, burnishing the transcript, and keeping up with high achieving peers.” Wanting to pull their children off the fast track parents worry about getting them stuck behind. The author believes students should be given wiggle room to find passions, develop interests, and bounce back from failure. Bruni states kids should “tumble gently into sleep, which is a gateway, not an impediment, to dreams.” Students are exhausted from their daily schedules and lose sleep due to it, Bruni proves his point by discussing personal experiences, statistics from other schools, and works he’s read.

In life, we all encounter those night where we can’t seem to get to sleep. This can be due to insomnia or having a lot of things to do and little time to do them. During college and afterwards people will begin to deal with a lack of sleep more and more as they gain more responsibilities. I’ve always heard it’s not good to go without sleep and I agree with this thought. This was confirmed when we had a lecture on consciousness. We discussed how our sleep and wake schedule, biological clocks, bodily functions, etc., are controlled by circadian rhythms (Truelove, 2017).

Given the thought of Middle Tennessee State University’s final exams are in five weeks makes most if not all students anxious. Procrastination begins, stress rises, and sleep decreases with most students. According to Brown University, “In a 2001 study, only 11% of college students have good quality sleep, and 73% have occasional sleep problems.” This means almost three out of four quarters of college students have sleeping problems such as insomnia. However, sleep is very important to the human body mentally and physically. When sleeping, the human body feel refreshed because the brain is working less and relaxes the muscles. Nevertheless, there will still be sleep deprivation, but it can lead to fatigue, irritability, and memory problems (Bernstein 147). As a college student sleep more, the grade point average, memory, and immunity will increased. The solutions to sleeping more are time management and a nightly routine.

Weaver from Oklahoma State University. According to the authors “the purpose of the present study was to determine if sleep deprivation and/or poor sleep quality in a sample of non-depressed university students was associated with lower academic performance” (Gilbert, Cameron. 295). The study was also made to determine the relationship between sleep deprivation, sleep quality, and academic performance (Gilbert, Cameron. 298). It was hypothesized that by the end of the study, participants who had higher levels of sleep deprivation and poorer sleep quality would have lower academic performance (as indicated by grade point average [GPA] and course incompletions—drops, withdrawals, and incompletes) than participants with little sleep deprivation and good sleep quality (Gilbert, Cameron. 298). By the end of the study, the authors discussed the results in the following narration:

Sleep is a subjective phenomenon in which each individual is unique with respect to their interpretation of what normal or good sleep means to them. There has been continuous debate concerning what normal sleep means and how it is defined. It is important to understand that the physiology of sleep is constantly evolving in many individuals. For instance, sleep patterns change as one ages. While children have a greater ratio of NREM sleep in comparison to adults, adults demonstrate a greater ratio of REM sleep, compared to children. In addition to age differences, gender has also been shown to demonstrate differences in sleep, most notably in adults. For example, it has been shown that women tend to have a higher percentage of slow wave sleep (SWS) than men. Nevertheless, it is still unclear what determines the definition of normal sleep (1). A multitude of methods and tools have been created to measure normal sleep, both subjective and objective. This includes questionnaires, diaries,

Modern Technology has helped make the study of sleep economical and easier due to which various studies have been carried out on sleep. And hence experts call this “the dawn of the golden age of sleep research” and ironically the question arises “If this is sleep research’s golden age, then why are we all so tired?” In addition to this the

Moreover, many of the claims the article makes, as outlined above, have a biological and psychological scientific basis; however, the article fails to mention the sources from which its conclusions was drawn from. That said, in this paper three differing journal articles will be presented that focus on the different processes that take place during sleep. The scientific journal articles will be analyzed and compared to the Cosmopolitan article. as summarized above.

Participants were required to send time stamped text messages to the sleep laboratory day and night, once again, participants were not monitored and results then depend on the reliability of the individual. Wrist actigraphy was also used in the week prior to the experiment. It is a simple, reliable and

Veronique Greenwood’s article, “Why Do We Need to Sleep?” was written in early January for The Atlantic. The studies for the article were located in Tsukuba, Japan. In Tsukuba, there is a new institution, the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine. The institution was built for researchers to be able to do more in depth studies of sleep. The benefits of sleep are still mysterious, however, there is still hope in uncovering these sleepy mysteries. The man behind the institution is the director, Masashi Yanagisawa; who created it to learn more about the basic biology of sleep, rather than the causes and treatment of sleep problems. If there is someone or thing that is awake for a long period of time they will eventually have a

To understand the sleep rhythms, physiology and it's effects on our body. We need to base that on scientific foundation such as in this research.

This research study was designed to examine the connection between sleep and one specific kind of performance, which is academic performance, among university students. This chapter framework the methodology that can be practical to attain the goal and objectives of the research study. Therefore, suitable preparation and thorough analysis are compulsory in planning the methodology procedure to get the expected result. A self-report questionnaire was utilized in this research study to measure sleep-related variables and educational performance, of university students.