In-Class Lab Prompts/Preliminary Outline

What is my topic?

This project will look at how poor quality sleep has a number of negative consequences, hopefully encouraging students and teachers alike to consider their sleep schedules an important aspect of their life. Poor sleep habits affect learning/memory, academic performance, behavioral functioning, and overall body health, and should be a major concern for students, teachers, and parents.

What do I think about my topic?

My topic is important to me because it affects my life and every single life around me: everyone sleeps! I want my readers to care about what I have to say because it applies to their life. Showing links between poor sleep and the negative effects will hopefully spur thoughts about how their own sleep patterns affect their life, and hopefully promote actions to improve their sleep. I think if everyone got more sleep, the world would be a happier place.

What do I know about my topic?

Sleep is an extensive problem in the United states, as 65% of Americans report having sleep problems, including fragmented sleep, difficulty falling asleep, or not feeling refreshed when awakening (NSF 2008 poll) . A later National Sleep Foundation poll (2009) found that 1,550 deaths and 71,000 injuries each year are a direct result of driver fatigue.

What is my claim about the topic?

Poor sleep habits affect learning/memory, academic performance, behavioral functioning, and overall body health, and should be a major concern for students, teachers, and parents.

What is my stance on the issue I’m writing about?

The main reasons I believe sleep is a viable health issue that needs our focus is because:

1. There is a connection between poor sleep and learning/memory
1. Dang-vu and colleagues found that sleep is involved in brain development and that neurons ‘repeat’ activations to incorporate experiences into long term memory.
2. Marquet found that sleep is involved with consolidating memories, and when some brain activities were carefully tracked during sleep, they were found to match the activity recorded while awake. This suggests memories are repossessed during sleep. Marquet also found that subjects who were allowed to sleep after training performed significantly better on later tests.
3. One study (reported by Saey) found that mice who got interrupted sleep could not remember objects they had seen before, and treated them just like new objects.
4. Gratisar and colleagues found that students who had slept less did not perform as well on the tests they conducted, specifically on more complex tasks that involved manipulating information.
2. Sleep and academic performance are correlated
1. Trockel and colleagues examined 31 variables on GPA, and sleep habits, such as wake up time, bedtime, and total sleep time, showed the most significant positive correlation with GPA.
2. Gaultney found in her study that GPAs were significantly correlated with the amount of sleep the students received.
3. Chiang et al found that students who had trouble falling asleep had lower GPAs.
4. Kelly, Kelly, and Clanton conducted a similar study and found that students who slept longer had a higher GPA on average.
5. Wolfson and Carskadon found that students reporting B’s or better had more total sleep time and generally earlier bedtimes. Student’s reporting C’s or worse reportedly slept less and went to bed later.
3. Sleep has a role in behavioral functioning
1. Wolfson and Carskadon (same study as above) found that students with both short sleep and irregular sleep schedules reported more sleepiness, more depressed mood, and greater problems with sleep/wake behaviors (than did adequate sleepers).
2. Sadeh and team found correlations between sleep quality and test performance, suggesting that children who got poor quality sleep had greater problems with attention, reaction, and behavior regulation.
3. Sadeh’s second study found that extension of sleep led to improved memory function and improved performance on a complex reaction test.
4. Millman found a lot of support that daytime sleepiness (caused by less total sleep time or fragmented sleep) has negative effects on performance and cognitive abilities.
5. Clickinbeard and colleagues found that children who slept less were involved in more property delinquency.
4. Sleep is important for health.
1. Lee and colleagues found that women who had poor quality sleep had more daytime fatigue and worse depressive and physical symptoms than adequate sleepers.
2. Wells found that sleep had a significant impact on performance and productivity, stress, and health and mortality. They also found that insufficient sleep was correlated with many chronic issues such as heart disease, stroke, depression, and diabetes.

Which sources back me up?

Sources that support my ideas are the capital letters above ^ (A, B, C, etc)

Sources I disagree with:

I don’t have very many… but Bin and colleagues found that the prevalence of short sleep in the United States has actually decreased since 1985, which is contrary to what the National Sleep Foundation reports. (2002 Sleep in America poll)