Auditory attention and multiattribute decision-making during a 33h sleep-deprivation period: mean performance and between-subject dispersions

Abstract

One purpose of this study was to compare attention in the evening (22:00 h), in the late night (04:00 h), in the morning (10:00 h) and in the afternoon (16:00 h) during a period of complete wakefulness beginning at 08:00 h with a mean daytime performance without sleep deprivation. Another purpose was to investigate sleep deprivation effects on a multi-attribute decision-making task with and without time pressure. Twelve sleep-deprived male students were compared with 12 male non-sleep-deprived students. Both groups were tested five times with an auditory attention and a symbol coding task. Significant declines (p < 0.05) in mean level of performance on the auditory attention task were found at 04:00, 10:00 and 16:00 h for subjects forced to the vigil. However, the effect of the sleep deprivation manifested itself even more in increased between-subject dispersions. There were no differences between time pressure and no time pressure on the decision-making task and no significant differences between sleep-deprived and non-sleep-deprived subjects in decision strategies. In fact, the pattern of decision strategies among the sleep-deprived subject was more similar to a pattern of decision strategies typical for non-stressful conditions than the pattern of decision strategies among the non-sleep-deprived subjects. This result may have been due to the fact that the sleep loss acted as a dearouser. Here too, however, the variances differed significantly among sleep-deprived and non-sleep-deprived subjects, indicating that the sleep-deprived subjects were more variable in their decision strategy pattern than the control group.

Sleep Deprivation Influences Some but Not All Processes of Supervisory Attention

“…First, sleep deprivation may have subtle influences on basic perceptual-motor processes that we would not have detected but may influence components of supervisory attention (e.g., Linde, Edland, & Bergstrom, 1999;Norton, 1970;Raz et al, 2001). Second, detailed assessment of sleep state (i.e., continuous electroencephalography) and conditions during sleep deprivation and subsequent performance (e.g., exact levels of light exposure) would be useful to more precisely define both circadian and homeostatic (sleep loss) states of participants and their maintenance of alertness during testing (e.g., Boivin et al, 1997).…”

The effects of 28 hours of sleep deprivation on respiratory sinus arrhythmia during tasks with low and high controlled attention demands

“…In the current study tasks were grouped into low and high controlled attention tasks. As mentioned above, some reports have found that complex, engaging tasks are more resilient to the effects of sleep deprivation than nonengaging vigilance‐type tasks (Hockey et al, 1998; Linde et al, 1999). However, in a meta‐analysis, the results seem to indicate that both simple and complex tasks can be susceptible to sleep deprivation (Pilcher & Huffcutt, 1996).…”

Sleep Deprivation Biases the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Economic Preferences

“…Behavioral studies suggest that SD-generated impairments in cognition lead to deficits in the overall quality of decision making (Harrison and Horne, 1999;Linde et al, 1999). More recent studies that involve making decisions under uncertainty have found that sleep-deprived persons tend toward riskier options (Harrison and Horne, 2000;Killgore et al, 2006;McKenna et al, 2007), mirroring the behavior of patients with medial frontal damage (Bechara et al, 2000).…”