Sleep Deprivation Effects on Cognitive Flexibility in Dynamic Decision Making Environments
Abstract
Sleep loss, which is common in military operations, causes significant deficits in situational awareness and decision making, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In this project, healthy young adults were assigned to laboratory based sleep deprivation or a control condition. Study participants were tested on a suite of performance tasks, specifically developed for the study, while well-rested and during 38 hours of sleep deprivation. We found that impairments due to sleep deprivation could not be explained as mere downstream consequences of degraded vigilant attention. Reduced binding of acquired knowledge may also contribute to sleep deprivation-induced deficits. Expectation-driven cognitive processing may have both advantageous or disadvantageous consequences, depending on the context. However, cognitive flexibility training did not appear to be a viable countermeasure for the effects of sleep deprivation on situational awareness and decision making. Based on our findings, we developed a novel framework for understanding the effects of sleep deprivation on operationally relevant task performance. This provides a foundation for future interventions to increase resilience against operational performance impairment and help improve the safety and success of US military missions around the globe, and could benefit millions of Americans who are frequently deprived of sleep due to medical conditions or professional demands.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1086316
Entities
People
- Anthony Stenson
- Courtney Kurinec
- Darian Lawrence-Sidebottom
- Devon A Hansen
- Hans P. Van Dongen
- John M Hinson
- Kimberly A Honn
- Matthew E Layton
- Paul Whitney
Organizations
- Washington State University