McCarthy M E, Waters W F
Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 70803, USA.
Sleep. 1997 Feb;20(2):115-23. doi: 10.1093/sleep/20.2.115.
Ever increasing societal demands for uninterrupted work are causing unparalleled amounts of sleep deprivation among workers. Sleep deprivation has been linked to safety problems ranging from medical misdiagnosis to industrial and vehicular accidents. Microsleeps (very brief intrusions of sleep into wakefulness) are usually cited as the cause of the performance decrements during sleep deprivation. Changes in a more basic physiological phenomenon, attentional shift, were hypothesized to be additional factors in performance declines. The current study examined the effects of 36 hours of sleep deprivation on the electrodermal-orienting response (OR), a measure of attentional shift or capture. Subjects were 71 male undergraduate students, who were divided into sleep deprivation and control (non-sleep deprivation) groups. The expected negative effects of sleep deprivation on performance were noted in increased reaction times and increased variability in the sleep-deprived group on attention-demanding cognitive tasks. OR latency was found to be significantly delayed after sleep deprivation, OR amplitude was significantly decreased, and habituation of the OR was significantly faster during sleep deprivation. These findings indicate impaired attention, the first revealing slowed shift of attention to novel stimuli, the second indicating decreased attentional allocation to stimuli, and the third revealing more rapid loss of attention to repeated stimuli. These phenomena may be factors in the impaired cognitive performance seen during sleep deprivation.
社会对持续工作的需求不断增加，导致工人中出现了前所未有的睡眠剥夺现象。睡眠剥夺与从医疗误诊到工业和交通事故等一系列安全问题有关。微睡眠（睡眠非常短暂地侵入清醒状态）通常被认为是睡眠剥夺期间表现下降的原因。一种更基本的生理现象——注意力转移的变化，被假设为表现下降的额外因素。本研究考察了36小时睡眠剥夺对皮肤电定向反应（OR）的影响，这是一种衡量注意力转移或捕捉的指标。研究对象为71名男性本科生，他们被分为睡眠剥夺组和对照组（非睡眠剥夺组）。在需要注意力的认知任务中，睡眠剥夺组的反应时间增加，变异性增加，这表明睡眠剥夺对表现有预期的负面影响。研究发现，睡眠剥夺后OR潜伏期显著延迟，OR幅度显著降低，睡眠剥夺期间OR的习惯化显著加快。这些发现表明注意力受损，第一个发现揭示了对新刺激的注意力转移减慢，第二个发现表明对刺激的注意力分配减少，第三个发现揭示了对重复刺激的注意力更快丧失。这些现象可能是睡眠剥夺期间认知表现受损的因素。
