How Sleep Deprivation Impacts Students' Memory

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study was to determine if six hours of sleep a night for a week made a difference in memory compared to sleeping for eight hours a night for a week. Methods/Materials I had my participants sleep for six hours a night for a week and then take an online memory test that calculated how well a participant could recreate a pattern that they were shown. I then had them take the same memory test after a week of sleeping for eight hours a night. Then I gave them an hour to study with fake information I made up so they couldn't use any prior knowledge. I then had them sleep for six hours a night for a week again. After the week I tested them on the information I gave them earlier to test their long-term memory. I then repeated this with different data and the participants sleeping for eight hours a night this week. Then I compared the results from the two sets of weeks. Results The first set of data that tested short-term memory showed about a 38% increase on average in scores from the first week to the second week. The second set of data that tested long-term memory showed about a 16% increase on average from the first week to the second week. This proves that the number of hours of sleep a child receives does make an impact on their short and long-term memory. Conclusions/Discussion Although there have been studies that have shown the impact that sleep has on memory, none that I have found have done an experiment specifically on jr. high school students. My results prove that the number of hours slept makes a huge impact on young learners and the difference just two hours more of sleep has on their memory and subsequently their studies.

Awards (1)

• First Place

Competition history

• CSEF 2018 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0704

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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