Sleep Deprivation And False Memories Essay

In a laboratory study of sleep deprivation, researchers employed a variety of techniques to keep volunteers awake for variable amounts of time. One group of participants was kept awake for 24 hours, and the other was kept awake for 48 hours. During periods of forced wakefulness, participants were required to engage verbal learning tasks such as memorizing the definitions of obscure English words. At the conclusion of the period of forced wakefulness, participants were allowed to sleep for as

The results strongly suggested that placebo sleep strongly affects a person’s cognitive ability. To those that were told they got below average sleep (16.2% in REM) they received an average score of 22.13 out of 50 questions. Those who were told they received above average sleep quality (28.7% in REM) received a score of 34.81 out of 50. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a person’s mindset can have either a positive or negative influence on their daily cognitive abilities.

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?

Sleep deprivation is prevalent in industrialized societies and has been linked to serious health issues and traffic accidents. This essay views sleep and sleep deprivation from five different motivational perspectives in order to gain a holistic understanding of the phenomena. From evolutionary, psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive, and hierarchy of needs perspectives, it is inferred that the cognitive and behaviourist perspectives uphold the most merit for gaining understanding into sleep and sleep deprivation. However, it is

This article explains the importance of getting the perfect amount of sleep at night. The idea that sleeping for less than five hours or more than nine hours proves to have a negative effect on the human body. Sleep deprivation has a closely related link to memory retention and can cause a person to have trouble with daily task. The author continues to explain that not only is the brain effected by too little or too much sleep, but the rest of the body is also effected. Conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and even depression have links to not getting the perfect amount of sleep. The article concludes with listing tips to get the ideal amount of sleep at night, such as, going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day and limiting the amount of caffeine that is consumed throughout the day.

Most studies are about discovering the contributors of false memories. However, this study focuses on how sleep deprivation contributes to false memories even though many studies argue that sleep deprivation damages cognitive function. Their study went in detail by researching the effect encoding have during this process. They found that if a participant was sleep deprived during event encoding; he or she would increase the likelihood of falsifying memories. However, when the participant was sleep deprived after encoding had already occurred then there was no big impact on falsifying memories. These experiments are conducted on the effect of sleep deprivation contributing to false memories since false memories can have dreadful consequences.

Sleep deprivation is a serious concern among college students, who are "among the most sleep-deprived age group in the United States," (Central Michigan University, 2008). It is important to study the causes of sleep deprivation, or sleep disorders, among college students. According to Park (2009), "dozens of studies have linked an increase in nightly sleep to better cognition and alertness." A study by Central Michigan University (2008) found that sleep deprivation can lead to poor academic performance, impaired driving, depression, and behavioral problems. There are several variables that may affect sleeping patterns among college students. One is genetics or biological issues. It is highly

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

In the article, “ Sleep Deprivation and False Memories,” by Steven J. Frenda. Lawrence Patihis, Elizabeth F. Lotus, Holly C. Lewis, and Kimberly M. Feen, researcher ’s, from the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine and Michigan State, did a study on certain factors that affect memories and the creation of false memories. Researchers want to find, within this experiment, how sleep deprivation and memory storage relate to each other. The researchers are looking at the relationship between self-reported sleep duration and false memories and the effect sleep deprivation is susceptibility to false memories. The researchers started off there report by telling what false memories are and where they stem from. False memories are when the encoding process is

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:

The topic of this article is the subject of false-memories occurrence in children. False-memories occur frequently in adults and is scientific fact. Previous work has shown that false-memories are real and these memories can be difficult for the individual to detect from true-memories. When adults are given a list of words to memorize participants will recall words that were not on the list but were thematically related to the list. However, children have not displayed this strong tendency to produce false-memories and the reasoning is that children have less developed cognitive pathways unlike adults who have more developed pathways and tend to link items together that are often not there, especially when they are powerfully linked to all

Frenda and colleagues examined the relationship between sleep deprivation and the formation of false memories, due to prior research showing that there is a relationship between sleep deprivation and other cognitive functions, such as reaction time, working memory capacity, learning, and executive function. To support the methods they used, the researchers discussed types of false memory studies, which used suggestive questioning and misinformation procedures. They also mentioned that although there have been studies on sleep deprivation and false memory, the results have not proven to be very consistent, and they do not carry over into real life situations.

What do the effects of sleep deprivation have on people? When a person does not get enough sleep, he or she is depriving his or her body of something that it needs. A delightful sleep is one of the most satisfying human experiences with a role to play in supporting a good mood and cognitive acuity as well as in promoting physiologic balance and resilience (Chittora, Jain and Suhalka). People think because they get an insufficient number of hours of sleep, they will not have an emotional impact by it. Sleep is a required need for peoples’ day to day life to be able to perform and stay healthy emotionally and physically. The effects of sleep deprivation are an issue because it affects mood, performance, and health.

The number of hours of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. Infants need nearly 16 hours a day, while teenagers require about 8-9 hours on average. For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep. Women in the first three months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. The quantity of rest a person needs also improves if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a "sleep debt," which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Many studies make it clear that sleep deprivation is dangerous. Sleep-deprived people who are tested by using a driving simulator or by performing a hand-eye coordination task perform as badly as or worse than those who are intoxicated. Sleep deprivation also magnifies alcohol's effects on the body, so a fatigued person who drinks will become much more impaired than someone who is well-rested.

Sleep is one of the things that most students can say they do not get enough of. It is a time for us to rest and for a few blissful hours hopefully forget about the stress and worries of school and life. Unfortunately, due to too much work or too much studying to do, often enough, we do not get the amount we need each night to be fully rested the next day. But we have learned to cope with the sleep deprivation by drinking coffee in the morning to wake us up. Even though we are awake, how well can we function throughout the day when we have only had less than five hours of sleep? How much does our behavior change without enough sleep?