Effects of Sleep Deprivation - Lecture Notes | PSYC 101, Papers of Psychology

Download Effects of Sleep Deprivation - Lecture Notes | PSYC 101 and more Papers Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Example Paper Paper 2 / Group A Chapter 6: Effects of Sleep Deprivation, pp. 191-193 The textbook discusses the effects of sleep deprivation in Chapter 6 (pp. 191-193). Sleep researchers find that people who do not get an adequate number of hours of sleep per night (an average of 8 hours) carry a sleep debt. For example, if a person gets only 6 hours of sleep, they will carry a 2 hour sleep debt. Chronic sleep debt leads to many health related problems ranging from simple drowsiness and impaired concentration to hypertension and suppressed immune system functioning. This article from Yahoo News (see attached) describes a correlation between amount of sleep and childhood obesity. Researchers have found a negative correlation indicating that children who sleep fewer hours are more likely to be overweight or obese. The article gives American guidelines for the number of hours children should be sleeping each night and makes recommendations for parents. The article from Yahoo News is misleading because it presents the connection between childhood obesity and sleep deprivation as if it were a causal relationship. Rather than explain why children who are getting an inadequate amount of sleep tend to be overweight, the article concentrates on how many hours the children should be getting and offers suggestions for how to increase the amount of sleep that children are getting. According to the textbook, the reason why sleep deprivation might increase a risk of obesity may be due to changes in metabolic functioning resulting from sleep debt. It is also possible that children who are staying up later in the evening are eating more and watching more television which might also contribute to being overweight. The article does not mention this possibility.