Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Acute sleep deprivation has been found to cause a wide range of negative emotional consequences.However, less is known about how sleep-deprived individuals cope emotionally after such a drastic change, or about the timeframe it takes to recover from the emotional consequences of sleep deprivation.This thesis addresses these questions, as well as investigating factors that might buffer the effects of sleep deprivation and promote subsequent recovery.After three days of baseline recording, a sample of 63 healthy undergraduates underwent 24 hours of sleep deprivation in a naturalistic setting.Their recovery, in terms of mood, mood regulation and cognitive alertness, was tracked for the next three days.To account for any effect of overnight activities, the participants also recorded their perceived exertion and enjoyment levels for activities undertaken during the sleep deprivation period.On each of the three recovery days, they also recorded their use of recovery strategies (i.e., daytime napping, night sleep extension, caffeine consumption).Investigation 1 demonstrated that sleep deprivation had greater deleterious effects on positive affect than negative affect, and created an indeterminate state where the sleepdeprived person rejected their worsened mood yet did not act to repair it.Investigation 2 showed that a large degree of emotional recovery was achieved one day after sleep deprivation, and also revealed evidence that older age might mitigate against the effects of sleep deprivation and accelerate subsequent recovery.Collectively, Investigations 2 and 3 identified behavioural factors that might mitigate sleep deprivation effects and enhance subsequent emotional recovery, within a naturalistic setting.For the effects of sleep deprivation, the results of path analyses revealed that higher perceived physical and mental exertion during overnight activities predicted less emotional and cognitive decline immediately after sleep deprivation, even after controlling for perceived enjoyment of activities.During the recovery period, daytime napping predicted greater recovery from me the confidence to face unexpected challenges, and to continually improve myself.Thank you Helen, for encouraging me to have faith in myself, and believing that I could always achieve greater heights right from the start of our work together.Thank you Suzanne, for patiently cultivating my ability to communicate this research concisely, and facilitating the completion of the many milestones of this project.I would also like to thank the staff members of the School of Psychology and Exercise Science in Murdoch University, for providing constructive feedback on this research, which had added great value at the formulation and pre-submission stages of this project.Lots of gratitude to my previous research team, my Honours supervisor, Prof. Bonnie Barber, and my PhD research seniors, Gabriel Heaslip, Melanie Coleman, and Bep Uink, for training me in managing a large-scale research project (Youth Activity Participation Survey), which had informed some key fundamentals in this
Author: Yee Yan Kim
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2889181167