Are you curious if those all night cram study hours are working? I bet your
wondering if they are actually helping or hurting your midterm grade? I’m sure
all of us have spent an all nighter studying for that Chemistry or Economics
exam that you just have to do well on because its 50 percent of your grade. Not
only are you studying so hard for that A+, but your mental well-being. We all
feel pressured to do well in college for many reasons. For that high paying job
were promised if we graduate from a top-notch school or what about the
assumption that you will have a better future. And for those of you whose
parents are paying thousands of dollars for tuition, wouldn’t want to let mom
or dad down. The answer is here. June J. Pilcher conducted a study of whether
sleep deprivation affects your ability of acing that test if you just would
have went to bed earlier.
June J. Pilcher published an article “How sleep Deprivation Affects
Psychological Variables Related to College Students Cognitive Performance,” in
the Journal of American College Health on November of 1997.
Voluntary sleep deprivation is a common occurrence for many collge students,
who often partially deprive themselves of sleep during the week and compensate
by increasing their sleep time over the weekend. This pattern of sleep
deprivation and rebound becomes more pronounced around examination periods,
sometimes resulting in 24 to 48 hours of sleep deprivation. By depriving
themselves of sleep, college students are not only increasing their feelings of
sleepiness during the day, thus decreasing their ability to pay attention in
class, but are also negatively affecting their ability to perform on exams.
The effect of sleep deprivation on psychological variable associated with
performance, such as self-reported estimates of attention, effort, and
performance, have not been thoroughly investigated. Few studies have examined
perceived effort and performance, and the results from those studies have often
been contradictory. For example, some researchers have suggested that sleep
deprivation may affect the willingness of the individual to put forth the
effort to perform well on a task more than the actual ability of the individual
to perform.
By contrast, other researchers have concluded that people may realize a
decrease in performance levels following sleep deprivation and attempt to
overcome this by increasing their effort . However other studies have shown
that a perceived increase in effort does not appear to overcome the harmful
effects of sleep deprivation. In one study, the participants were given a
reward for better performance, which resulted in an increase in perceived
effort but no change in actual performance. In addition, studies have shown
that increasing amounts of sleep loss do not have a harmful effect on
participants’ self-reported motivational levels. As these results show the
relationship between sleep deprivation and psychological variables associated
with performance are not clearly understood.
This current experiment was done to find out what college students are really
doing to themselves when they pull an all night full of studying. The
experiment addresses three basic specific issues. First does it affect their
levels of concentration, effort and estimated performance? Secondly does sleep
deprivation significantly alters mood states that may be related to
performance. For example was their increased fatigue, confusion, and tension
and decreased vigor. The final purpose of their study was to determine whether
sleep deprivation alters peoples’ ability to make an accurate assessment of
their concentration, effort and estimated performance.
This is a basic research experiment because it is the study of a fundamental
issue and is extending our understanding of why sleep deprived college students
are not producing as good as results as non sleep deprived students.
Furthermore this experiment is just to show what we as college students
shouldn’t do. It provides us with information on whether to stay up all night
studying or to get a good nights rest. Which will help us get the grade we want
and deserve.
June J. Pilcher is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at
Bradley University. He got his bachelor degree in 1984 at The University of
Southern Mississippi in psychology and computer science. He then went to Max
Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, Germany in 1984-1985. After his time
in Germany he came back to the United States and got his Masters in
biopsychology at The University of Chicago.
Forty four students participated in the study. Twenty-six of them women and
eighteen of them were men. The mean age was 20.5 years. Each student was
randomly assigned to a sleep deprived or non-sleep deprived group. The group of
non-sleep deprived students was told to go home and sleep for approximately 8
hours in normal sleeping conditions. However the sleep-deprived group remained
awake under the supervisions of two research assistants in the sleep
laboratory. The participants interacted with each other and with the research
assistants, watched movies, played video and board games, or worked on personal
projects during the night, but were asked to limit caffeinated beverages and
sugary snacks to two each. The next morning both groups were taken to the
library, after breakfast, and tested. All participants then took the Profile of
Mood States (POMS) questioner, which asks questions about their mood. For
example do they feel friendly, tense and or angry? After completing this they
filled out the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WG). This survey
measures their cognitive performance. And then finally they were given the
Cognitive Interference Questionnaire (CG), which provides a list of types of
thoughts. The participants respond by stating how often they experienced those
thoughts while completing the WG task. The testing period took less than one
hour. The results of the experiment showed that sleep deprived students
reported higher subjective levels of concentration while completing the task
than the nondeprived participants did. The sleep-deprived students also
estimated that they expended significantly more effort to complete the task
than did the nondeprived participants. Although sleep-deprived participants
actually performed worse on the WG than the significantly higher levels of
estimated performance than the nondeprived participants did.
I believe this experiment did work well and showed great results that us
college students can benefit from. One being that the sleep deprived student
has to use more concentration than a nondeprived student to do cognitive tasks.
So when your up all night studying for that midterm you have the next morning,
remember that the longer you stay the up the harder it is going to be to stay
focused. Also from the study we are shown that sleep deprived students have an
extreme increase in fatigue and confusion. Now we all know that these are two
characteristics that are just not allowed when taking that “got to pass” exam.
So lets just all go to bed earlier and stop wasting our time studying all
night. Get some sleep!!