The Importance Of Social And Social Activities On Sleep

The study consisted of fifty, female, undergraduate college students. The ethnicities that were use for this study were African American, European, Asian, Hispanic, biracial, and a very slight percentage was categorized as other. The experiment would begin at 5:00pm everyday, for four weeks. One of the three groups was administered each day. The three groups were either peppermint, expectation, or control. Each participant was seated down, given an instruction sheet, a laptop, and was not able to see the other participants from their view.

In the study, the between-groups design and the cross-sectional design were used for research. There were 243 participants between the ages of 18 and 39, and the majority were females and Caucasians. The average age was about 21 years old.

Participant included in this study were 24 university students (50% females), recruited from introductory psychology and health courses at Edith Cowan University. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 45 years (M= 30.95; SD= 8.60). The students volunteered when asked by the experimenters during class lectures.

Being sleep deprived can also affect driving, can affect performance in school, and can lead to illness (Iarovici, 2014, p. 32). Social activities in college contribute to sleep problems, for example, drug use and heavy alcohol drinking (Iarovici, 2014, p. 32). However, sleep problems are not only caused by unhealthy lifestyles. Sleep problems during college years, a major time of development, can be a sign of mental illness such as depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder (Iarovici, 2014, p. 40). However, there are students who try have tried everything to fall asleep (e.g., not drink alcohol or caffeinated drinks) and they still experience sleeping problems. Some people have genes that cause them to be more alert during the night than in the morning, and others have delayed sleep syndrome, in which circadian rhythms are abnormal (Iarovici, 2014, p. 42). Delayed sleep syndrome is more common in young adults and interestingly, people obtain enough sleep, but they tend to fall asleep during the early morning than during the night (Iarovici, 2014, p. 42). Even though the individual may be getting eight hours of sleep, such a shift in sleeping time can lead to individuals feeling depressed because they cannot enjoy the activities others enjoy during the day, and can lead to individuals having

“Students who described themselves as struggling or failing school (C's, D's/F's) reported that on school nights they obtain about 25 min less sleep and go to bed an average of 40 min later than A and B students, ps < .001. In addition, students with worse grades reported greater weekend delays of sleep schedule than did those with better grades.” (Wolfson, Carskadon, pg.1). Because some students go to bed later, it results in them having worse grades. Whereas students who go to bed earlier tend to have A’s or

Later classes lead to better grades. Students who said they got poor grades reported getting twenty-five minutes less sleep a night and going to bed an average forty minutes later than kids with good grades did. Cognitive function and psychomotor skills are closely related to sleep, and numerous studies have correlated sleep loss with significant decreases in children and adolescents’ performance (Wolfson 1). Studies of middle school and high school students reported that more sleep, earlier bedtimes, later weekday rise times, and less daytime sleepiness were associated with better grades in school and greater motivation to do one’s best in school (Wolfson 2).

Sleep duration and quality participate in normal metabolism, function of immune system, mood, and cognitive functioning [1]. Short duration of sleep and circadian misalignment are hypothesized to contribute to many problems of health including over weight, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiac disease, mood disorders, cognitive dysfunction, and

A total of forty participants were used in the study. They had been recruited from friends and family and had not been offered any reward or incentives to take part in the study such as money, or credits for a course they were taking. Anyone who was either themselves a student of psychology or had knowledge of the experiment and its contents were not able to take part. An equal number of males and females took part in the experiment. The mean age of the participants involved was 39.3. The oldest was 65 and the youngest 21.

For most people, they grow up seeing how others in their community act and that is how they grow up and decide what they will believe. For a small southern town it can be very important to fit in with everyone else and never act like the one who has the most problems. Especially when you suffer from a problem like insomnia, where there is nothing physically wrong with your outward appearance. Others who do not know of the problem think those who suffer from insomnia should act like a normal person and for those who do know they feel as though the person suffering is using it to get sympathy or to get something they want. This can cause those who suffer from the illness to want to hide it from everyone and go about their day like there is not anything wrong.

This paper explores five different sources on the changes in sleep over the adults' lifespan. There are multiple explanations as to the changes in sleep from infancy to the older adult, and through a series of conducted experiments a further explanation is given. Judd (2010) explores pediatric sleep issues that impact children from infancy to teen years. Following Judd's claims, Wrzus, Wagner, and Riediger (2014) correlate night-to-night sleep variations and the affective well-being among adolescents and adults. Wilckens, Woo, Kirk, Erickson, and Wheeler (2014) study the importance of sleep in young adults through multiple cognitive tasks. Millman (2012) points out that at a later age, sleep becomes fragmented due to drop in slow wave sleep. To sum it up, English (n.d.) summarizes the sleep changes throughout life. Therefore, this research focuses on the different changes within the adults' sleep stages.

Based on the latest update on the National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendation, seven to nine hours of sleep for young adults and adults represent the standard amount of sleep for healthy individuals.(Hirshkowitz et al., 2015) To be fair however, it comes as no surprise to most people, as it has, for many years, have been sleeping around those hours before. Be that as it may, it helps to bring into light why in recent years, more and more people are getting less sleep than they used to. As observed previously, it should not, and is not challenging to find evidence of people reportedly lacking sufficient sleep. In reference to a poll made by the National Sleep Foundation, approximately 39% of people living in Great Britain, 53% of Americans, and 66% of Japanese all report sleeping fewer than seven hours on an average work night. This is reason for concern evidently as any sleep times far below of the seven to nine hour time range most typically indicate signs or symptoms of more severe physical health problems. In particular, recent studies have been providing evidence that correlates the lack of adequate sleep with increased risk of health problems such as: type 2 diabetes, child- and adulthood obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and a higher risk of mortality to top it

A person who is known as a night owl has a circadian phase sleep disorder known as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome/Disorder (DSPS), this is when the person falls asleep “2-6 hours later relative to desired and socially conventional rise times”. This condition leads to societal and health disadvantages, resulting from inadequate amount of hours spent sleeping. With chronic inadequate sleep, DSPS can lead to weight gain, depression, anxiety disorders, diabetes, heart disease; however given the right environment a person can live with DSPS without ill effects. (3)

Landis, Parker, & Dunbar (2009) derived at the theoretical framework by integrating “scientific and theoretical literature” (p. 116), which demonstrated that “demographic, biological, behavioral, and environmental factors” (p. 116) influence sleep duration and risk for obesity. Longitudinal studies revealed that older teenagers were sleep deprived, went to bed late, and showed decreases in slow wake sleep, as well as disturbances in circadian rhythm. They also tended to sleep longer

The experiment included a total of 151 participants (42 male; 109 female), all of which are enrolled in a Griffith University second year Psychology course.

In 2009, researchers, Colleen E. Carney Ph.D., Jack D. Edinger, Björn Meyer, Linda Lindman, and Tai Istre, published their study called, “Daily Activities and Sleep Quality in College Students”. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between sleep and social rhythms. The researchers acknowledged that, “It has long been recognized that consistent and qualitatively satisfying sleep is largely dependent on a robust and well entrained endogenous circadian rhythm” (Carney, Edinger, Meyer, Lindman, and Istre, 2009). The researchers further explained that in their study they were going to attempt to establish a relationship between one’s daily activities and social engagements to his or her sleep quality. The researchers hypothesized that, “self-reported good sleepers would report more daily activities, show earlier daily scheduling of their social rhythms, have social rhythms characterized by greater regularity, and be involved in more activities with active social engagement than would poor sleepers” (Carney et al., 2009).