A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Short-Term Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Variables

By Julian Lim, David F. Dinges. Psychological bulletin, 2010

1,262 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A substantial amount of research has been conducted in an effort to understand the impact of short-term (<48 hr) total sleep deprivation (SD) on outcomes in various cognitive domains. Despite this wealth of information, there has been disagreement on how these data should be interpreted, arising in part because the relative magnitude of effect sizes in these domains is not known. To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis to discover the effects of short-term SD on both speed and accuracy measures in 6 cognitive categories: simple attention, complex attention, working memory, processing speed, short-term memory, and reasoning. Seventy articles containing 147 cognitive tests were found that met inclusion criteria for this study. Effect sizes ranged from small and nonsignificant (reasoning accuracy: ḡ = −0.125, 95% CI [−0.27, 0.02]) to large (lapses in simple attention: ḡ = −0.776, 95% CI [−0.96, −0.60], p < .001). Across cognitive domains, significant differences were observed for both speed and accuracy; however, there were no differences between speed and accuracy measures within each cognitive domain. Of several moderators tested, only time awake was a significant predictor of between-studies variability, and only for accuracy measures, suggesting that heterogeneity in test characteristics may account for a significant amount of the remaining between-studies variance. The theoretical implications of these findings for the study of SD and cognition are discussed.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9d1570cd8017a9816df6171c97cfbc8e79815d1a

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Citations in the corpus

Sleep and the Price of Plasticity: From Synaptic and Cellular Homeostasis to Memory Consolidation and Integration (2014, background): “…sleep in wake occurred in hypothalamic and brainstem neurons that exert a central control on arousal, it could help explain the increased sleepiness and global deficits in arousal and attention after sleep deprivation, especially for simple, boring tasks (Killgore, 2010; Lim and Dinges, 2010).”
Relationships between psychological, physical, and behavioural health and work performance: A review and meta-analysis (2011, background): “Problem-free sleep has been shown to be associated with positive affective states in the morning (Sonnentag, Binnewies, & Mojza, 2008 ) and higher levels of cognitive functioning (Lim & Dinges, 2010 ), and is expected to lead to recovery that facilitates work engagement and performance.”
Sustaining attention to simple tasks: a meta-analytic review of the neural mechanisms of vigilant attention. (2013, background): “A recent metaanalysis confirmed the special sensitivity of VA tasks to sleep deprivation (Lim & Dinges, 2010), and according to Wickens, Gordon, and Liu (1998, p. 397), fatigue is estimated to be a causal factor in about 200,000 car accidents per year.”
Thriving at work but insomniac at home: Understanding the relationship between supervisor bottom-line mentality and employee functioning (2020, background): “Extant research not only highlights sleep as an important aspect of employee functioning but also an important driver of long-term effectiveness (Barnes et al., 2011, 2015, 2017; Christian and Ellis, 2011; Lim and Dinges, 2010; Siegel, 2005).”
Joint Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society on the Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: Methodology and Discussion. (2015, positive): “When gauging the value and utility of the literature in addressing our question, the panel was keenly focused on the nine tenets of causality typically referred to as the Bradford Hill criteria,115 which include: (1) strength of association, (2) consistency of findings, (3) specificity and (4) tempo”
Sleep: a health imperative. (2012, neutral): “Sleep deprivation adversely affects neurobehavioral function 82-84 and leads to excessive daytime fatigue and sleepiness, 85 which increase the risk of human-error related accidents.”
Working in our sleep (2012, methodology): “Indeed, the meta-analysis noted above conducted by Lim and Dinges (2010) focuses on studies with sleep deprivation periods of less than 48 hours, meaning many of the studies they examined entailed 1 night or less of missed sleep.”