Good sleep is essential for good condition of a human body. People who constantly fail to have a good and successful sleep often become irritated and reduce the abilities of memory and attention. Academic performance is reduced as well. Sleep affects logical thinking processes and the ability to make conclusions.
The conducted research should focus on various psychological limitations people are sure to experience if they do not have good sleep at night. Conducting a research project devoted to human sleep habits in children and the affects on their confidence as adults, the existing data should be evaluated, and the conclusions are to be drawn in the sphere of sleep habits and its impact on human mind activity.
Human confidence is a result of human performance. Depending on the quality of the performed tasks and completed issues, on the personal and general feelings, and on the ability to draw conclusions, people may be either confident or not. Bad sleep habits, such as a short length of sleep, late going to bed, and bad quality of sleep at childhood reduce human confidence and make people be uncertain in personal actions at the adult age.
Considering this problem, it is important to understand what a notion of ‘confidence’ means. According to Cambridge Dictionary, ‘confidence’ is defined as “the quality of being certain of your abilities or of having trust in people, plans, or the future” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2011).
Thus, confidence depends on personal feelings in relation to others and to self. This paper aims to conduct a literature review considering the research in the sphere of the sleep habits in children that affect them and their confidence as adults.
Psychological Dependency on Sleep Habits
Wolfson and Carskadon (2003) conducted a research where they tried to test human psychological abilities and dependency on sleep habits. The researchers paid attention to the quality of sleep and mentioned such characteristics as the time of going to bed and waking up, the duration, and quality of sleep.
The research results show that “those who went to bed late and got up late, those whose sleep was short and those who could not sleep the whole night being constantly woke up reduced their academic performance. These people were irritated and could not focus on one and the same problem” (Wolfson & Carskadon, 2003, p. 493).
Additionally, those people failed to think logically, perform the easiest tasks at colleges, follow the teacher’s ideas and respond to questions. Bad performance at school reduces students’ self-assurance as they feel personal failures.
Moreover, when people fail to present good results at colleges, they understand that they fail to meet the expectations of the others, and it also affects confidence. Using this research as the basis for the future hypothesis, it may be stated that influencing students’ academic performance, bad sleep in childhood affects their literacy and as a result the future adult life and having lack in knowledge, people are going to lead limited lives.
Sleep Problem Impact
Blagrove and Akehurst (2000) performed a research that shows “people who have sleep problems also have difficulties in logical thinking and eyewitness memory” (p. 72). The research is rather effective as it helps to conclude that people who have memory problems and those who are unable to complete the logical tasks have lower confidence than others.
In addition, such people are not sure whether all the tasks have been completed and whether everything is delivered. People who have bad sleep habits often forget multiple things and cannot correctly express their point of view. Furthermore, they fail to create connections between ideas because it is rather difficult for these people to build the chains between the objects and images with references to the situations and circumstances during which these images were perceived.
It is important to note that those people who suffer from the regular sleep deprivation have problems not only with the eyewitness memory but also with creating the logical chains and logic reasoning for explaining definite events or phenomena. These factors affect the level of the person’s confidence negatively because they influence the individuals’ self-esteem.
The Connection between Sleep Problems in Childhood and in Adulthood
It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that when children have bad sleep habits in childhood the development of these habits can influence the problems with sleep in adulthood, and, as a result, these aspects can affect the person’s confidence. The speech of those children who suffer from sleep problems is often confusing and illogical because they experience fatigue caused by the constant sleep deprivation.
It is difficult for these children to follow discussions, and they speak by separate sentences and thoughts which are not connected. This fact can contribute to creating a number of complexes which children experience, and they cannot get rid of them easily. Children’s complexes can be discussed as the results of the childhood psychological traumas, and such issues are difficult to be treated successfully.
Thus, first of all, sleep deprivation influences the human memory and abilities to make the logical conclusions (Blagrove & Akehurst, 2000). That is why, having bad memory affected by the sleep problems in childhood, these people are going to have worse memory performance in the future as mind abilities reduce with age. Becoming older, the human mind becomes less flexible and it is more difficult to get rid of the consequences of sleep problems.
Therefore, the effect of bad sleep in childhood becomes higher in adulthood that creates many difficulties. It is necessary to focus on the fact that people with bad memory and the lack of strong logical thinking abilities cannot gain high goals successfully. That is why, the level of their self-esteem is comparably low. Moreover, staying at one and the same level of the personal development, these people cannot feel self-assured and satisfied with their achievements.
Sleep Deprivation Impacts on Confidence
Baranski’s (2007) research is devoted to the problem on how sleep deprivation affects confidence. However, being limited just by one sleepless day the impact of sleep deprivation on confidence cannot be considered effectively. People did not feel serious inconveniences and their confidence remained the same. The result could be predicted. Nevertheless, the importance of this research is in the measures used.
Judging confidence, the research referred to three tasks such as “perceptual comparison, mental addition and general knowledge” (Baranski, 2007, p. 184). To make sure that both objective and subjective visions of the issue have been measured, such methods as meta-cognitive judgments, examination of indicators of confidence-accuracy relation, and accuracy of pre- and post task estimates of performance were used.
Even though the research has limitations such as the concise duration of depriving from sleep, this method may be used for planning my research. Using the methodology and measures of the confidence discussed in this article, the duration of sleep depriving, reduction of sleep quality and increase of the cases of late going to bad and late waking up lead to the reduction of confidence as people are unable to perform the usual tasks. Additionally, this research will expand to children to assess the effects of sleep on their confidence as well and follow the changes in the adult age.
The Connection between Sleep, Mood, and Stress
Lund, Reider, Whiting, and Prichard (2010) have conducted a profound research aimed at considering the relations between sleep, mood, and stress. The researchers referred to such measures as the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS), the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), the Profile of Mood States (POMS), and the Horne-Ostberg Morningness Eveningness Scale (MES).
Measuring the PSQI, children were asked to respond to the following sleep aspects, “subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleep medication, and daytime dysfunction over the past month” (Lund, Reider, Whiting, & Prichard, 2010, p. 125). ESS measured the activities which were going to make children asleep. MES referred to the time period of children’s activity, either day or night.
SUDS measured the level of stress after good and poor sleep and POMS measured children’s mood after poor sleep (Lund et al., 2010, p. 126). Therefore, the measures conducted in this research help create the general picture of the poor sleep impact on children. The further research may help understand the level of impact of these outcomes on children at the adult age.
The Correlation between Sleep and Confidence
Confidence is a state of mind when people are fully satisfied with performance and results of their activities. Bad sleep habits can ruin human plans because of the feeling of constant fatigue and make people behave differently. Furthermore, bad sleep habits can influence not only the human emotional state but also reduce the brain activity, and that fact can lead to the reduction of self-assurance because people begin to concentrate on their inabilities to cope with different tasks successfully.
It is also useful to determine such an important factor that poor sleep habits in childhood can negatively affect the human organism and its development. Therefore, the effect can be so strong that becoming adults, people still experience the consequences of bad sleep in childhood.
Sleep deprivation and bad sleep habits influence the physical development of an organism and can cause different problems with health. Moreover, problems with health, memory, logic and analytical thinking can affect the human reduction of confidence.
Thus, it may be concluded that much research has been conducted in the sphere of sleep and its impact on human mind. Some of the researches involve the discussion of confidence, others do not, but all the researches connected to the human mind may be used as the supportive arguments or contradicting ones.
The research results discussed in this paper may be used as the supportive arguments and the basis for the research devoted to the consideration how the sleep habits in children affect them and their confidence as adults. Being children, people may experience bad sleeping habits that affect behavior and thinking processes.
Absence of the appropriate treatment for sleep issues can have significant impacts. That is why, its effect on adult life is inevitable. The research conducted on the basis of the results discussed in this literature review should focus on the effects of the consequences of poor sleep of children having become adults. The long-term disorders are going to be identified as the health problems, which occur in childhood and transfer to the adult age.
References
Baranski, J. V. (2007). Fatigue, sleep loss, and confidence in judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 13(4), 182-196.
Blagrove, M., & Akehurst, L. (2000). Effects of sleep loss on confidence-accuracy relationships for reasoning and eyewitness memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6(1), pp. 59-73.
Cambridge Dictionary. (2011). Web.
Lund, H. G., Reider, B. D., Whiting, A. B., & Prichard, J. R. (2010). Sleep patterns and predictors of disturbed sleep in a large population of college students. Journal of Adolescent Health, 46, pp. 124–132.
Wolfson, A. R., & Carskadon, M. A. (2003). Understanding adolescents’ sleep patterns and school performance: a critical appraisal. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 7(6), 491-506.