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My goal for the behavior change project was to increase my sleeping duration. I measured my time of sleep in minute(s) and used the data to develope a bar graph that depict my duration of sleep per night in one week. Comparing the original and updated graph, there is a minimal decrease in my sleeping duration. Based on the original graph, my lowest sleep time is 124 minutes and my highest sleep time is 492 minutes. After averaging all the time I slept through seven days, I am averaging around 346 minutes of sleep a night. In the updated graph, my sleep time is slightly lower at 308 minutes a night. As explained in Part C, my intervention is very much contingent on my school and work schedule. Therefore, the sleeping duration recorded shows a sign of negative outcome since there are many things to do and study for near the end of the semester. Part of my intervention was to remind myself that I should get ready to sleep by using the alarm on my phone. During the project, I identified a facilitator that I believe was helpful to support my sleeping habits. Exercising before sleep has still proven to be the most efficient way to help me fall asleep. Expending energy requires me to replenish by sleeping; something I noticed after a long day at work during the weekend. My ability to sleep through noises has not shown any sign of improvement, since it
For example, before the intervention, I did not know that exercising would benefit me so much for my sleep. I realized that after I notice how easy it was to fall asleep after I used so much energy throughout the day at work. Planning ahead works really well too if you’re serious about meeting the deadline and really following it closely. There’s no point in making the weekly planner, without occasionally looking at it and planning ahead before the event, like an
When most people think of sleep, they think of it as a relaxed but yet not a very important part of our daily lives. What most people don’t understand is although we are not up and moving around and getting tasks completed, our brains are still very active. Without sleep our bodies do not function correctly on a daily basis, and our mental state is at risk.
Gomes, Ana Allen, Jose Taveres, and Maria Helena Azevedo. “Sleep-Wake Patterns and Academic Performance in University Students.” 7 Oct. 2002: 7. Education-Line Database. 2 Feb. 2004. <http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002200.htm.>
We live our entire life in two states, sleep and awake1. These two states are characterized by two distinct behaviors. For instance, the brain demonstrates a well-defined activity during non-REM sleep (nREM) that is different when we are awake. In the study of sleep by Huber et. al., the authors stated that sleep is in fact a global state2. It is unclear whether this statement means that sleep is a state of global behavioural inactivity or the state of the global nervous system. The notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system served as basis for sleep researchers to search for a sleep switch. The discovery of the sleep switch, in return, provided evidence and enhanced the notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system. The switch hypothesis developed from the fact that sleep can be initiated without fatigue and it is reversible1. It was hypothesized that there is something in the brain that has the ability to control the whole brain and initiate sleep. Studies have found a good candidate that demonstrated this ability3. They found a group of neurons in the Ventrolateral Preoptic (VLPO) nucleus. It was a good candidate because it was active during sleep, has neuronal output that can influence the wakefulness pathway, and lesion in the area followed reduce sleep3. The idea that there is something that can control the whole brain and result sleep state supports the idea that sleep is a global state of the nervous system.
My behavior change project was attempting to have a more regular sleep schedule. This project was challenging to me because I typically have a hard time falling asleep and waking up, and I usually procrastinate leading to many late nights. I think the biggest challenge that this change presents is slipping up and staying up late or sleeping or napping can mess up your whole cycle of sleeping and take an even longer amount of time to correct. In the beginning keeping track of my sleep felt good because I knew that I was getting enough sleep and it gave me an excuse to stop studying and go to bed. Ultimately though, making a conscious effort to track my sleep and get more sleep was more stressful than jut letting sleep happen naturally.
However, after I stopped the conditioning, the sleeping time went back to the middle range of baseline and the conditioning time. It is the process called extinction. Extinction states that when the reinforcement/punishment stops, the behavior will return to baseline . This phenomenon demonstrates that the conditioning is effective in a short period of time.
Many times people think they can accomplish more if they could eliminate so much sleeping time. However, they are only hurting their productivity if they lose sleep. Two articles deal with the issue of sleep deprivation. The College Student Journal published an article about the grade-point average of college students and sleep length, while U.S. News & World Report produced an article dealing with the lack of
Sleep is one of our basic needs to survive and to function in day to day operations, but not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. Some people can survive on very little sleep, i.e. five hours a night, and some people need a lot of sleep, to the extend that they are sleeping up to 10 to sometimes 15 hours a night (Nature, 2005). According to Wilson (2005) the general rule states that most people need from seven to eight hours of sleep. The deprivation of sleep in our society in continually increasing with the demands in society increasing work loads, the myth that a few hours of sleep is only necessary to function properly and that sleep is sometimes considered as killing time (Nature, 2005). Sometimes sleep deprivation is also caused by other situations like sleep disorders, i.e. sleep apnea, chronic insomnia or medical conditions such as stress (Wilson, 2005).
To increase the efficacy of my behavioral plan I came up with three specific goals to help me keep up with my intentions. First, I designated specific times on Tuesday, Thursd...
Sleeping is something that is an essential part of human nature and is a must in order for one to be a functional human being. Sleep is an idea that is accompanied by many wives’ tales, including the ideas that one needs seven to eight hours of sleep each night and alcohol helps one fall asleep and sleep more soundly. One myth about sleep is that during sleeping, one is in a state of nothingness. In truth, however, it has been discovered that during sleep the brain is active, variations in heartbeat and breathing occur, and the eyes and ears are active throughout the time of sleep. These activities during a person’s sleep are important because they help that person be more aware, awake, and alert during consciousness. If all of these important activities occur during sleep, why is it that people are so willing to short themselves of this vital activity? Although much about sleep still remains a mystery, research and experiments continue to show how important sleep is to each and every person. Throughout this paper, I will discuss sleep and the effects that it has on performance and health, especially in college students. A college student’s sleeping pattern is a reliable indicator to their level of performance in the classroom and other school-affiliated activities, as a lack of sleep leads to decreased performance. Sleep is directly related the level of performance and health in an individual; the more rested a person is, the better that person will perform and feel (Dryer, 2006).
Important public policy issues have arisen in our modern 24-hour society, where it is crucial to weigh the value of sleep versus wakefulness. Scientific knowledge about sleep is currently insufficient to resolve the political and academic debates raging about how much and when people should sleep. These issues affect almost everybody, from the shift worker to the international traveler, from the physician to the policy maker, from the anthropologist to the student preparing for an exam.
“Twelve Simple Tips to Improve Your Sleep.” (2009, Dec. 18). The Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Healthy
Studies have previously been conducted about sleep and students. These studies cover a variety of variables including sleep length, inductive reasoning, preference in time of day, grade-point average, sleep quality, etc. (Escribano & Díaz-Morales, 2013);(Gilbert & Weaver, 2010). In one study researchers used Likert scales on a one to five platform to gather information (Gilbert & Weaver, 2010), and another on a one to four scale (Gaultney, 2004). Another study had a survey that asked for objective information such as exact grade-point average (Kelly, Kelly & Clanton, 2010). Yet another study used sleep logs and divided the students into a series of three classes based on their sleep habits (Tsai & Li, 2004). This stu...
Specific purpose: To persuade my audience to take care of our sleep duration as it may affect our daily life.
Maynard, W., & Brogmus, G. (2006). Safer shift work through more effective scheduling. Occupational health and safety, 16.
The negative aspect of my physical health is my sleeping patterns. 8 hours of sleep for me is not consistent, especially when I have many school assessments and tutoring lessons outside of school. Managing school assessments, piano tutorials and theory, sport, tutoring and outside of school activities can be quite stressful.