Stenson Anthony R, Whitney Paul, Hinson John M, Hansen Devon A, Lawrence-Sidebottom Darian, Skeiky Lillian, Riedy Samantha M, Kurinec Courtney A, Van Dongen Hans P A
Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA.
Sleep and Performance Research Center, Washington State University, Spokane, Washington, USA.
J Sleep Res. 2023 Apr;32(2):e13744. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13744. Epub 2022 Oct 7.
Sleep deprivation consistently decreases vigilant attention, which can lead to difficulty in performing a variety of cognitive tasks. However, sleep-deprived individuals may be able to compensate for degraded vigilant attention by means of top-down attentional control. We employed a novel task to measure the degree to which individuals overcome impairments in vigilant attention by using top-down attentional control, the Flexible Attentional Control Task (FACT). The FACT is a two-choice task that has trials with valid, invalid, and neutral cues, along with an unexpected switch in the probability of cue validity about halfway in the task. The task provides indices that isolate performance components reflecting vigilant attention and top-down attentional control. Twelve healthy young adults completed an in-laboratory study. After a baseline day, the subjects underwent 39 hours of total sleep deprivation (TSD), followed by a recovery day. The FACT was administered at 03:00, 11:00, and 19:00 during sleep deprivation (TSD condition) and at 11:00 and 19:00 after baseline sleep and at 11:00 after recovery sleep (rested condition). When rested, the subjects demonstrated both facilitation and interference effects on cued trials. While sleep deprived, the subjects showed vigilant attention deficits on neutral cue trials, and an impaired ability to reduce these deficits by using predictive contextual cues. Our results indicate that the FACT can dissociate vigilant attention from top-down attentional control. Furthermore, they show that during sleep deprivation, contextual cues help individuals to compensate partially for impairments in vigilant attention, but the effectiveness of top-down attentional control is diminished.
睡眠剥夺持续降低警觉性注意力，这可能导致执行各种认知任务时出现困难。然而，睡眠不足的个体或许能够通过自上而下的注意力控制来弥补警觉性注意力的下降。我们采用了一项新颖的任务——灵活注意力控制任务（FACT），以测量个体通过自上而下的注意力控制克服警觉性注意力受损的程度。FACT是一项二选一任务，包含有效、无效和中性线索的试验，并且在任务进行到大约一半时，线索有效性概率会意外切换。该任务提供了一些指标，可分离出反映警觉性注意力和自上而下注意力控制的表现成分。12名健康的年轻成年人完成了一项实验室研究。在基线日之后，受试者经历了39小时的完全睡眠剥夺（TSD），随后是恢复日。在睡眠剥夺期间（TSD状态）的03:00、11:00和19:00以及基线睡眠后的11:00和19:00以及恢复睡眠后的11:00（休息状态）进行FACT测试。休息时，受试者在有线索提示的试验中表现出促进和干扰效应。睡眠剥夺时，受试者在中性线索试验中表现出警觉性注意力缺陷，并且通过使用预测性情境线索减少这些缺陷的能力受损。我们的结果表明，FACT能够区分警觉性注意力和自上而下的注意力控制。此外，结果显示，在睡眠剥夺期间，情境线索有助于个体部分弥补警觉性注意力的损伤，但自上而下注意力控制的有效性会降低。
