title: Sleepless night, restless mind: Effects of sleep deprivation on mind wandering.
abstract: 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. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School.
authors.forename: Jia-Hou
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1985-2110
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Poh
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School.
authors.forename: Pearlynne L H
authors.initials: PLH
authors.lastname: Chong
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke-NUS Medical School.
authors.forename: Michael W L
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6087-0548
authors.initials: MWL
authors.lastname: Chee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000523:psychology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult