title: Sleepiness: evaluating and quantifying methods.
abstract: The aim of this literature review is to analyze the methods mainly used for evaluating and quantifying the complex phenomenon of sleepiness. The most common distinction is between subjective measures or self-evaluations, performance decrement measures, measures for evaluating sleep propensity and measures of arousal decrease. Techniques mainly used in specialized literature will be briefly presented and commented upon, evaluating their sensitivity, advantages and limitations. We conclude that: (a) different measures inevitably are differently sensitive to sleepiness fluctuations; (b) the amount of prior sleep is strongly relevant in quantifying sleepiness levels; (c) subjective and behavioral measures show a higher level of vulnerability to external and motivational factors.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Via dei Marsi, 78, I-00185 Rome, Italy. sleeplab@uniroma.it
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Curcio
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Casagrande
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bertini
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005221:Fatigue; D006801:Humans; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000379:methods; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis