Study shows the massive impact sleep deprivation can have on a person's attention span

While many people enjoy a good night's sleep, others prefer staying awake late. What isn't widely known is that nighttime sleep is crucial for physical health and cognitive function. A recent study in the Journal of Experimental Brain Research found that continuous sleep deprivation significantly impairs the ability to process information quickly and pay attention, making it hard to react to changes promptly. 

The study focused on a phenomenon called "attention blink." This occurs when a person processes successive stimuli rapidly, resulting in a diminished response to the second stimulus, per Science Direct. According to Psy Post, the research explored how sleep deprivation affects attention blink. Study author Carlos Gallegos from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León shared, "Initially, as a student, I was interested in studying the brain. After joining the Laboratory of Psychophysiology, I had the opportunity to delve into other topics that were very interesting to me, such as biological rhythms and sleep, or the limits in human neuropsychological capacities like attention and memory."

The study involved 22 undergraduate students around 17 years old, without any history of health problems or sleep-related issues. To ensure the influence of variables, the participants were made to follow a regular sleep schedule. All of them stayed at the laboratory for 6 days after that. For the first two days, the participants slept a full 8 hours to learn their usual attention span. Then, they went through total sleep deprivation on the fourth day. Finally, they were given two days to recover from sleep deprivation and sleep as much as they wanted to see if their attention span returned to its normal level after sleep deprivation.

The participant's attention span was measured using the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation or RSVP method. The task involved finding two target numbers among a bunch of letters blinking rapidly and in quick succession on the screen. They found that there was a significant decrease in a person's ability to find the target numbers after being sleep-deprived. In a normal situation, the attention blink happened at 200-500 milliseconds and with sleep deprivation, it became 600 milliseconds.

"The main takeaway is that skipping a night of sleep can increase the risk of making errors. While some errors are harmless (such as misreading a word while studying), others can be fatal (like pressing the accelerator instead of the brake while driving). It's important to emphasize that when we push capacities like attention and memory to their limits (as it occurs in the Attentional Blink), there's always a chance of error, even during the day or without sleep deprivation," Gallegos explained.

"In our task to measure the Attentional Blink, stimuli were presented rapidly, individually and successively and participants had to identify two numbers (targets) among letters (distractors). When stimuli appear in direct succession (without distractors in between), people often identify the first stimulus as the second and vice versa. This inversion in reporting the order of stimuli is even greater with sleep deprivation. This result suggests that some perceptual alterations could lead to errors in selecting (attending) the correct stimulus," the researcher added. The study highlighted the dangers of sleep deprivation on crucial tasks that require error-free work. People recovered their attention span after two days of recovery.