During the sleep deprivation experiment many subjects stayed awake by exercising vigorously throughout the night. They played basketball in the gym. Some of the students mention how exhausted they were in their feedback reports . Horne and Foster (1995) found that subjects restricted to four hours sleep were able to overcome the effects of sleepiness by vigorous exercise. Interestingly, a moderate amount of exercise tended to make the subjects even more sleepy. This may help to explain why the Colchester subjects over-exerted themselves; It was an attempt to remain awake. If they had only played a gentle game of basketball, they may have felt even sleepier than subjects who had not played basketball.
Harrison, Horne, and Rothwell (1997) found that sleep loss did not affect the ability of subjects to solve anagrams. The Colchester study also found that anagram solution was unaffected by sleep loss.
Harrison and Horne (1997) asked 10 independent blind judges to rate pre-recorded randomised sections of subjects' speech. Judges rated the sleep-deprived subjects' intonation as being significantly flattened or monotonic. Judges in the Colchester experiment did not consider the intonation of the sleep-deprived subjects' speech to be significantly different from the speech of the non-sleep-deprived controls.
Carlyle Smith, a professor of psychology at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario (1989) suggests that students who party all night at weekends tend to forget much of what they have learnt during the college week! Students were taught a complex logic game, and then deprived of sleep (or just REM sleep) that night. When tested a week later, the sleep-deprived students showed a learning deficit of 30%, compared to controls. Subjects who learnt the task on Wednesday and were sleep deprived on Friday, also demonstrated a similar deficit when tested a week later.
Horne, J.A., and Foster, S.C. (1995) Can exercise overcome sleepiness? Sleep Research , 24A, 437.
Harrison, Y., and Horne, J.A. (1997) Sleep deprivation affects speech. Unpublished manuscript.
Harrison, Y., Horne, J.A., and Rothwell, A.L. (1997) Frontal lobe language impairments during sleep loss can not be counteracted - Clues to sleep function? Unpublished manuscript.
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Copyright © 1998 Gary Sturt
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