the lack of sleepinterferes with concentration and productivity. But it can also lead to mistakes with more or less dangerous consequences. Michigan State University researchers warn of the unsuspected effects of fatigue in a large experimental study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Carried out on 234 participants, the scientists analyzed the effects of a deprivation of 24 hours of sleep on workers.
Participants were asked to go to the sleep lab at 10 p.m. and complete a series of tasks in a certain order. Sometimes participants were interrupted and had to pick up where they left off. At midnight, half of the volunteers went back to sleep while the other had to watch and continue the series of tasks. The next day, the whole group had to go back to work. Experience has shown that those who have not closed their eyes have made many more mistakes than those who have been able to rest at home.
“All the participants met the performance criteria in the evening, around 15 percent of the participants in the sleep deprived group made mistakes in the morning, compared to 1% of those who slept,” observes the co-author of the Kimberly Fenn study at Timesnownews site. Those who had to stay awake had many more forgetfulness than the others.
For the researchers, these results suggest that sleep deprivation can have harmful and even dangerous consequences in certain professions. Sleep deprived workers should not perform certain tasks, especially activities that require a large number of interruptions and the errors of which can be costly or serious.
Lack of sleep, a danger in surgery
Lack of sleep is one of the main reasons for “errors and accidents in the field of surgery, public transport and even the operation of nuclear power plants”, observes the researcher. And to cite surgery as an example: “Every day, about 11 sponges are forgotten in the body of patients who have undergone surgery. This represents each year” 4000 potentially disastrous missteps “that can result from lack of sleep, Kimberly notes. Fenn.
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