Pilcher June J, McClelland Laura E, Moore D Dewayne, Haarmann Henk, Baron Jaclyn, Wallsten Thomas S, McCubbin James A
Department of Psychology, 418 Brackett Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1355, USA.
Aviat Space Environ Med. 2007 May;78(5 Suppl):B25-38.
Although substantial research has been completed on the effects of sleep deprivation on performance, very little research has focused on language-based tasks. The purpose of the current study was two-fold: 1) to determine the extent to which short-term sleep deprivation affects language performance; and 2) to examine whether relatively short and easy-to-administer "probe" tasks could signal decrements in language performance under sleep deprivation conditions.
There were 38 non-native English-speaking students who were paid to complete a 28-h sleep deprivation study. The participants completed several potential cognitive and vigilance probe tasks and a variety of language-based tasks. Each task was administered four times, once in each testing session during the night (18:30-22:30, 23:00-03:00, 03: 30-07:30, and 08:00-12:00). All tasks were counterbalanced across the testing sessions.
Repeated-measures ANOVAs indicated that language tasks that required sustained attention and higher level processing (e.g., reading comprehension) were negatively affected by sleep deprivation, whereas other tasks that relied primarily on more basic language processing (e.g., antonym identification) were not affected. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses assessed how well the probe tasks predicted language performance. These results indicated that performance accuracy and/or speed on many of the probe tasks predicted decrements in language performance.
These findings suggest that sustained work conditions and sleep deprivation negatively affect some types of language performance. Moreover, the use of probe tasks indicates that easy-to-administer tasks may be useful to identify when detriments are likely to occur in language-based performance under sleep deprivation conditions.
尽管关于睡眠剥夺对表现的影响已开展了大量研究，但针对基于语言的任务的研究却很少。本研究的目的有两个：1）确定短期睡眠剥夺对语言表现的影响程度；2）检验相对简短且易于实施的“探测”任务能否预示睡眠剥夺条件下语言表现的下降。
38名非英语母语的学生参与了一项有偿的28小时睡眠剥夺研究。参与者完成了多项潜在的认知和警觉性探测任务以及各种基于语言的任务。每个任务进行了四次，在夜间的每个测试时段各进行一次（18:30 - 22:30、23:00 - 03:00、03:30 - 07:30和08:00 - 12:00）。所有任务在各测试时段进行了平衡处理。
重复测量方差分析表明，需要持续注意力和更高层次处理的语言任务（如阅读理解）受到睡眠剥夺的负面影响，而其他主要依赖更基础语言处理的任务（如反义词识别）则未受影响。分层线性模型分析评估了探测任务对语言表现的预测能力。这些结果表明，许多探测任务的表现准确性和/或速度预示了语言表现的下降。
这些发现表明，持续的工作条件和睡眠剥夺会对某些类型的语言表现产生负面影响。此外，探测任务的使用表明，易于实施的任务可能有助于识别在睡眠剥夺条件下基于语言的表现何时可能出现损害。
