title: The effects of sleep deprivation on information-integration categorization performance.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Sleep deprivation is a serious problem facing individuals in many critical societal roles. One of the most ubiquitous tasks facing individuals is categorization. Sleep deprivation is known to affect rule-based categorization in the classic Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, but, to date, information-integration categorization has not been examined.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the effects of sleep deprivation on information-integration category learning.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants performed an information-integration categorization task twice, separated by a 24-hour period, with or without sleep between testing sessions.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-one West Point cadets participated in the sleep-deprivation group and 28 West Point cadets participated in a control group.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Sleep deprivation led to an overall performance deficit during the second testing session-that is, whereas participants allowed to sleep showed a significant performance increase during the second testing session, sleepless participants showed a small (but nonsignificant) performance decline during the second testing session. Model-based analyses indicated that a major contributor to the sleep-deprivation effect was the poor second-session performance of a subgroup of sleep-deprived participants who shifted from optimal information-integration strategies at the end of the first session to less-optimal rule-based strategies at the start of the second session. Sleep-deprived participants who used information-integration strategies in both sessions showed no drop in performance in the second session, mirroring the behavior of control participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings suggest that the neural systems underlying information-integration strategies are not strongly affected by sleep deprivation but, rather, that the use of an information-integration strategy in a task may require active inhibition of rule-based strategies, with this inhibitory process being vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA. maddox@psy.utexas.edu
authors.forename: W Todd
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Maddox
authors.forename: Brian D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Glass
authors.forename: Sasha M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Wolosin
authors.forename: Zachary R
authors.initials: ZR
authors.lastname: Savarie
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bowen
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Matthews
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Schnyer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001244:Association; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult