Sleepless Night, Restless Mind: Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Mind Wandering

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. General Vol. 145; no. 10; pp. 1312 - 1318
• Main Authors: Poh, Jia-Hou, Chong, Pearlynne L. H., Chee, Michael W. L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01-10-2016
• Subjects: Adult; Attention - physiology; Awareness; Awareness - physiology; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Control; Daydreaming; Effects; Executive Function - physiology; Female; Human; Humans; Male; Memory - physiology; Metacognition; Mind; Mind Wandering; Psychology; Sleep Deprivation; Sleep Deprivation - psychology; Task Performance and Analysis; Thinking - physiology; Young Adult; context-regulation; sleep deprivation; mind wandering; executive control; meta-awareness
• ISSN: 0096-3445; 1939-2222
• DOI: 10.1037/xge0000207

Sleep deprivation can result in degradation of sustained attention through increased distraction by task-irrelevant exogenous stimuli. However, attentional failures in the sleep-deprived state could also be a result of task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs, or mind wandering). Here, well-rested and sleep-deprived participants performed a visual search task under high and low perceptual load conditions. Thought probes were administered at irregular intervals to gauge the frequency of TUTs and level of meta-awareness of mind wandering. Despite sleep-deprived participants reporting more TUTs, they also reported less awareness of TUTs. Although the frequency of TUTs decreased in the high load condition in well-rested participants, they were equally frequent across low and high perceptual load conditions in sleep-deprived participants. Together, these findings suggest that sleep deprivation can result in a loss of ability to allocate attentional resources according to task demands consistent with diminished executive control. This may have been exacerbated by reduced meta-awareness.