LAUSR

Sleep deprivation impairs many facets of behavior, including performance at tasks. People may perform less efficiently at tasks due to impairments to cognitive processes like working memory following sleep deprivation. However, research shows that compensatory activity occurs when participants are sleep deprived and are faced with difficult tasks (Horne & Pettitt, 1985). This study explored participants’ capability and motivation of completing tasks of varying difficulties. These data come from a larger study investigating bedroom environment, sleep, and cognition. In this study participants were given an actigraph wgt3x and were told to sleep as they normally would for three-day period. Each morning, participants took a brief survey and cognitive battery shortly after waking. In the survey, participants self-reported their sleep quality from the previous night using a modified version of the sleep disturbance subscale from the Medical Outcomes Survey (Hays et al., 2005). Additionally, a modified version of the Math Effort Task (MET; Engle Friedman et al., 2003) was used. Participants chose a difficulty and completed six simple addition problems without aid of a calculator or scratch paper. Data were cleaned and analyzed using generalized linear mixed effect modeling in SPSS 28. Two models were run to examine performance (accuracy) and difficulty choice on the MET. In our model predicting performance there were no significant predictors. In our model predicting the choice of difficulty, participants of more socially advantaged populations and those who reported better subjective sleep quality chose to complete harder problems (b = -.05, p = .01). No significant findings were observed between objective measures of sleep such as sleep efficiency and duration with difficulty chosen or performance. Motivation to complete more difficult tasks may be related to the quality of sleep one receives during the previous night. The observed lack of difference in performance based on sleep suggest that when given simple problems, sleep deprivation does not impair cognitive performance or that people can compensate for poor sleep when the task is easy. Future studies should continue to explore the relationship between sleep and motivation. I/O small grant department funding, university research funding, and travel funding.