Sleep deprivation affects us much more than prior theories have suggested, say researchers, adding that it impacts placekeeping - or, the ability to complete a series of steps without losing one's place, despite potential interruptions. " which is startling," said study researcher Kimberly Fenn from Michigan State University in the US.
"Sleep-deprived individuals need to exercise caution in absolutely everything that they do, and simply can't trust that they won't make costly errors. Oftentimes - like when behind the wheel of a car - these errors can have tragic consequences," Fenn added. For the study Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the researchers recruited 138 people to participate in the overnight sleep assessment; 77 stayed awake all night and 61 went home to sleep.
All participants took two separate cognitive tasks in the evening: one that measured reaction time to a stimulus; the other measured a participant's ability to maintain their place in a series of steps without omitting or repeating a step - even after sporadic interruptions. The participants then repeated both tasks in the morning to see how sleep-deprivation affected their performance.
Sleep deprivation causes widespread deficits
After being interrupted there was a 15 per cent error rate in the evening and we saw that the error rate spiked to about 30 per cent for the sleep-deprived group the following morning. The rested participants' morning scores were similar to the night before. "There are some tasks people can do on auto-pilot that may not be affected by a lack of sleep," Fenn said.
However, sleep deprivation causes widespread deficits across all facets of life. "Our findings debunk a common theory that suggests that attention is the only cognitive function affected by sleep deprivation," said study researcher Michelle Stepan. "Some sleep-deprived people might be able to hold it together under routine tasks, like a doctor taking a patient's vitals," Stepan said.
