How Sleep Deprivation Affects Psychological Variables Related to College Students Cognitive Performance

The path to the college student with sleep deprivation, should include a screening process to determine if the patient’s sleep deprivation has a primary cause or if it is secondary. Some common primary sleep disorder as defined by the DSM-IV-TR, are divided into two categories, dyssomnias

Employee work. The links between effort and performance (E-P) may involve issues as to whether the work is achievable and realistic, and is it interesting and challenging? If the link is severed, other things to consider are whether additional training or education may be needed. To help employees achieve this link, it is important for the supervisor or manager to provide reasonably challenging work by taking into consideration the person’s education, training, skill sets, and their level of experience, but it is also important to provide assignments that can stretch a person’s skills. However, it is important to be cautious and to avoid a challenge too extreme for the person; it could result in de-motivating them. It is important for management to use creative ways to find a balance by establishing attainable and manageable goals for the employee. By making the work valuable, there are rewards that come directly from the work to give employees an increased self-esteem and achievement (Quick, 1989).

In the present study we sought to characterize abnormalities in sleep architecture and quality, in a cohort of patients with medically refractory versus and controlled epilepsy, versus normal healthy controls and to study the effect of sleep parameters on cognitive function in these groups. The main observations made were of significantly longer self-reported and polysomnographic TST in patients with refractory epilepsy in comparison to controlled epilepsy and healthy controls. Sleep architecture was also found to be markedly disturbed among epilepsy patients in both groups, with prolonged REM latencies, and frequent arousals and awakenings although these abnormalities were statistically similar between the groups. Our main observation is that higher total sleep time has a negative correlation with memory and executive function performance.

In today’s society, many people go through many days yawning, fighting to stay awake and indulging in many cups of coffee. If you were to ask them what the cause of their restlessness was, the popular statement would be a lack of sleep. However, most would not dare to think that a lack of sleep could cause multiple issues in everyday life. This problem has been seen to peak during the good ole college days. It is hard to imagine that those days of all-night cramming sessions and those late nights partying causing students to be sleep deprived could lead to a variety of problems like stress, long term insomnia, and a weakened immune system.

Sleep is essential for optimal human function. In fact, a lack of sleep can actually affect important cognitive functions, like memory. A 2007 study added to the already substantial evidence that even acute total sleep deprivation impairs attentiveness, working memory, and reaction time in various tasks (Alhola, Polo-Kantola). One such way to further this investigation of the effects of sleep deprivation on memory is through the Memory Interference Test, or MIT. MIT is a program designed by Gaston Pfluegl, Ph.D., and Enrique Lopez, Psy. D., at UCLA to test the memory of students. Along with a memory test, the MIT also anonymously collected the physical states, mental states, and demographics of each student test subject, providing a substantial database through which students can test hypotheses, such as the connection between sleep deprivation and memory. Since the MIT requires short-term memory recall, the hours of sleep a student had before taking the test could have a noticeable effect on his or her performance. An unprecedented study this year found that sleep deprivation may actually even induce false memories, which would certainly impact a student taking the MIT because the test requires the subject to recognize images that have been previously presented to them (Frenda, et al). The hypothesis is that students who slept 8 hours before the test will perform better on the MIT than students who only slept 4 hours. The null hypothesis is that students who had adequate

How often do you hear people complain about being tired all the time? Sleep deficiency has been investigated for years, but there has been no single method to explain why people nod their heads asleep in crucial times focus: during an important class lecture or even at the wheel. However, it is clear that without a good night’s rest, sleep-deprived individuals can find it difficult to pay attention, even if they want to stay awake. Thus, it becomes important to examine the underlying mechanisms that explain the negative effects of sleep loss on attention and cognitive performance. Sleep effects can be measured by alertness, which describes the overall state of the cognitive system and can be attributed to two primary components: a circadian system and a sleep homeostasis system (Åkerstedt & Folkard, 1995). The circadian system is composed of an oscillating 24-hour cycle that fluctuates in alertness throughout one day, while the homeostasis system is a gradual decline of alertness as wake time increases throughout the day, only recovering after sleep (Achermann, 2004). Attention is facilitated by alertness and is the behavioral and cognitive process of focusing on one piece of information at a time. Although it is a broad phenomenon, it can be divided into two components: vigilant attention and selective attention. Vigilant attention is a person’s ability to keep concentrating on one task, while selective attention is a person’s ability to focus distinctly on one stimuli to

College is exciting transition for freshman as they can meet new people and be open to opportunities in their life; however, college is very demanding when it comes to school work. Freshmen tend to underestimate their school work and end up stacking their homework, leading them to become stressed and develop unhealthy habits. Sleep deprivation is a common habit among freshmen as they stay up all night to study for an exam or write a paper. If students feel like they have too much work, they burn themselves out and end up losing the motivation to finish their homework, making their grade fall. With all this work, freshmen spend most of their time at home or in the library doing their homework and feel too exhausted to socialize. College is supposed to be a thrilling experience for freshmen, but they tend to form bad habits that makes college more difficult and do not know how to get rid of them. Freshmen need to know developing good sleeping habits, motivating themselves, and finding the time to socialize is important in maintaining their health and social life throughout college. Freshman should set a sleep schedule for themselves, create a reward system for themselves when completing their work, and join a club or organization in order to manage their school life and enjoy the exciting experience of college. (225)

Lastly, the long-term effect and the most common consequences are mood and behavior. Usually, changes in mood and behavior are the first signals and symptoms that show individuals are suffering from sleep deprivation. Before experiencing hallucinations and motor and cognitive impairment, the first symptom that was shown in Gardner’s behavior was mood and behavior change. “Sleep and emotion are closely linked, however, the effects of sleep on socio-emotion task performance have only recently been investigated” (Beattie et al., 2014). People who are usually gentle and soft will become aggressive and depressive, people become sensitive to their surroundings, or individuals feel more irritable, hostile, and angry when they experience sleep loss. According to Kushida (2005), “mood changes commonly include

Thesis Statement: When the projects, exams, and extra-curricular activities start to pile up on one another it seems as though there is not enough time in the day.  This is when college students tend to lose precious hours of sleep and the consequences can be costly.

The effects of partial sleep deprivation on cognitive performances (such as attention and reaction time) was examined in twelve handball goalkeepers. After becoming familiar with the tests, the subjects participated in three tests in a randomized order over three days with a 72 hour rest period in between each session. These three days were (i) a reference-night which subjects slept nine hours, (ii) a partial sleep deprivation at the beginning of the night (SDB) where subjects slept from 3:00 to 7:00 a.m., and (iii) a partial sleep deprivation at the end of the night (SDE) where subjects slept from 10:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. During each session subjects performed a reaction time test, a selective attention task, and a constant attention task. In order to ensure there was no learning effects during the reaction test, barrage test, and Stroop test, the form and color were changed between sessions. Results show that the biggest effect was towards reaction time, which increased significantly from the reference night to SDB (p < 0.001) and SDE (p < 0.001). Also the results showed that reaction time was significantly higher during SDE than during SDB. Selective attention and constant attention decreased significantly from the reference-night to SDB and to SDE. Likewise, selective attention was significantly lower during SDB when compared to SDE. These findings suggest that cognitive performance (reactive time, selective attention, and constant attention) of handball goalkeepers

The processes engaging in cognition including attention (consciousness, selective and steady attention) may be determined through analysis of active brain section, circadian rhythms and the effects of sleeplessness (Valdez et al, 2008). Developmental changes in the sleep processes, cirdcadian cycle, and inequality of circadian cycles in sleep disorders, circadian rhythms, lead to important consequences for cognitive performance. Generally, if awaking is happened at proper biological times, biological clock’s activity is useful for human’s cognition (attention). But when awakening is happened at improper biological time because of environmental circumstances (jet lag, early school start, long working time, working schedules) or because of disorders in circadian rhythms, then disharmony between circadian and physiological cycles of sleep lead to cognitive disorder (Wright, Lowry, & LeBourgeois, 2012).

According to the author, several people study the connection between sleep and memory. Experimenters work to determine if sleep mainly affects memory errors or if it impacts behaviors. When testing the effects, most studies only use either total sleep deprivation (TSD) or partial sleep deprivation (PSD) when analyzing the issue

From a cognitive perspective sleep deprivation occurs because conscious thinking patterns and value judgements that an individual perceives will or will not give them an expected outcome.

A great deal of students experience issues related to sleep when coming to college. These issues in sleep can be related to stress, going out and coming home late, or difficulties in adjusting to the college life. There are many ways college students are able to seek help for their difficulties in sleep. Sleep deprivation cannot only cause fatigue but also health issues such as a weakened immune system. College is said to be one of the best times of someone’s life, but with sleep difficulties it is hard to enjoy all that college has to offer. With the help of peer educators, it is easier to raise awareness and provide help to college students on ways to deal with sleep difficulties.

This also makes a person lose focus and not have the ability to concentrate long enough to complete a task****.