{"id":980,"date":"2010-04-17T00:13:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T00:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/?p=980"},"modified":"2010-04-17T00:13:01","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T00:13:01","slug":"sleepy-soldiers-split-second-situation-assessment-skewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/2010\/04\/17\/sleepy-soldiers-split-second-situation-assessment-skewed\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleepy Soldiers’ Split-Second Situation Assessment Skewed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study demonstrates decrease in ability to make\u00a0rapid judgement calls due to sleep deprivation.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By: Nicole Myers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In a study conducted at the University of Texas and published in the journal Sleep<\/em>, researchers found that sleep deprivation negatively impacts information-integration, the type of cognitive processing that allows fast, accurate, gut-feeling decisions.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Soldiers in combat rely heavily on the ability to instantly make the right decisions in high pressure situations. Researcher Tom Maddox explains, \u201cinformation-integration\u2026 is critical in situations when solders need to make split-second decisions about whether a potential target is an enemy soldier, a civilian, or one of their own.” Unfortunately, combat missions don\u2019t exactly lend themselves to full nights of sleep, and soldiers in these operations are often extremely sleep- deprived.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The study tested 49 West Point Cadets on information-integration tasks, once as a baseline and then again after 24 hours of either sleep deprivation or a normal sleep-wake cycle. While the rested cadets significantly improved their scores in the second round of testing, the sleep-deprived cadets\u2019 scores dropped slightly. This indicates that even the mild sleep-deprivation of one night\u2019s sleep loss impacted the cadets\u2019 ability to use this crucial form of decision making.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Researchers observed that one way sleep-deprivation impaired decision making was by causing subjects to shift from the fast and accurate cognitive strategy of information integration to a slower, more controlled, but less-effective rule-based approach, in which they tended to over-think the problems.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The effect that sleep-deprivation had on decision making varied among individuals. Those who had a tendency to use a rule-based approach to problem solving in the first place were more vulnerable to the effects of sleep-deprivation. Some subjects continued to use an information-integration approach despite sleep-deprivation, and their performance showed no decline in the second set of testing. This suggests that the cognitive function necessary for information-integration strategies is not necessarily strongly affected by sleep deprivation. But, the use of an information-integration strategy in a task may require active inhibition of rule-based strategies, and this inhibitory process is what is vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An understanding of the effects of sleep-deprivation on various cognitive functions and decision making abilities is critical for a military in a time of war, when enormous physical demands are placed on soldiers who are often deprived of sleep and sustenance and who must make split-second life or death decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the original research click: http:\/\/www.journalsleep.org\/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=27617<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study demonstrates decrease in ability to make\u00a0rapid judgement calls due to sleep deprivation. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By: Nicole Myers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In a study conducted at the University of Texas and published in the journal Sleep, researchers found that sleep deprivation negatively impacts information-integration, the type of cognitive processing that allows fast, accurate, gut-feeling decisions. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Soldiers in combat … Continue reading Sleepy Soldiers’ Split-Second Situation Assessment Skewed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[2251,2091],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brain-and-body","tag-military-medicine","tag-physiology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}