Dynamic changes in work/rest duty cycles in a study of sleep deprivation

Abstract

The effects of moderate workload and 72 h of sleep deprivation were studied using a modified continuous-performance paradigm. Ten subjects were tested hourly on a number of perceptual and cognitive tasks designed to require approximately 30 min to complete, with the remainder of each hour free. As sleep deprivation continued, the average time on task increased at an accelerating rate. The rate of increase differed among tasks, with longer tasks showing greater absolute and relative increases than shorter ones. Such increases confound sleep deprivation and workload effects. In this paper, we compare the advantages and disadvantages of several experimental paradigms; describe details of the present design; and discuss methodological problems associated with separating the interactions of sleep deprivation, workload, and circadian variation with performance.

Selected Problems of Analysis and Interpretation of the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Temperature and Performance Rhythms

“…Furthermore, logical reasoning accuracy (computed in terms of errors of commission) is relatively insensitive to sleep loss using the Baddeley paradigm (Baddeley, 1968) when the relative position of two letters are judged on each trial Englund et al, 1985;. The issues of the choice of the response class (i.e., dependent variable) which best represent sleep loss data and the problem of the comparison of dependent variables across different studies of sleep deprivation have been raised and discussed by the present authors and by others Babkoff et al, 1985a;Babkoff et al, 1985b;Babkoff et al, 1988;Carskadon & Dement, 1979) but will not be presented in detail in this paper.…”

“…The protocol included physiological, psychological and performance testing every two hours, 36 test sessions for each of the tasks over the 72 hours of sleep deprivation. The testing segment of each two-hour block of time ranged from approximately 55 to 70 minutes providing a work-to-rest ratio of 0.45 to 0.60 (Babkoff et al, 1985b).…”

Correlates of nap taking in mothers of young infants

“…These findings introduce the question of whether mothers' sleep patterns are problems if mothers do not consciously address the severity of their sleep fragmentation. Previous studies have shown that objective measures of sleep loss are related to cognitive, emotional and physical impairment (Babkoff et al. 1985; Bonnet 1989; Krueger 1989).…”

Alertness, performance and off-duty sleep on 8-hour and 12-hour night shifts in a simulated continuous operations control room setting

“…Studies have shown that, on tests of cognitive performance, response latency increases as a function of cumulative sleep deprivation (Weiskotten and Ferguson, 1930;WiUcinson, 1961;Corcoran, 1964;Naitoh, 1968;Naitoh and Townsend, 1970;Hamilton et al, 1972;Kjellberg, 1977;Tilley et al, 1982;Babkoff et al, 1985; Monk and Folkard, 1985;Patrick and Gilbert, 1986). When humans are sleep deprived, mean response latency is thought to increase because of significantly longer response times (several times normal) on some trials, while the majority of performance trials are completed within normal response intervals.…”