The Consequences of Poor Sleep Essay

Good sleep is a guarantee of good condition for the whole human body. People who constantly fail to have a good and successful sleep often become irritated, they also reduce the abilities of their 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 devoted to human sleep habits in children and feeling the affect 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 feelings and the ability to draw conclusions, and on general feelings people may be either confident or not.

Bad sleep habits, short length of sleep, late going to bed, and bad quality of sleep at childhood reduce human confidence and make people uncertain in personal actions in the adult age. Considering this problem, it is important to understand what a notion ‘confidence’ means.

According to Cambridge Dictionary (2011), confidence is defined as “the quality of being certain of your abilities or of having trust in people, plans, or the future.”

Thus, confidence depends on personal feelings in relation to others and to self. The main idea of this paper is to conduct a literature review aimed at considering the research in the sphere of the sleep habits in children that affect them and their confidence as adults.

Wolfson and Carskadon (2003, p. 493). The authors have conducted a research where they tried to test human psychological abilities and their 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.

They also 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 others and it also affects confidence.

Using this research as the basis for the future hypothesis, it may be stated that affecting 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 worse lives.

Blagrove and Akehurst (2000, p. 72). The research shows that people who have sleep problems also have difficulties in logical thinking and eyewitness memory. 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. They fail to create connections between ideas.

The speech of such children is confusing and illogical. It is difficult to follow their discussion, they speak by separate sentences and thoughts which are not connected. This creates a number of complexes children experience and they cannot get rid of them easily as being childhood psychological traumas, such issues are difficultly treated.

People with bad memory and absence of the logical thinking abilities cannot gain high goals, and staying at one and the same level of personal development, people cannot feel self-assured.

Having bad memory in childhood, these people are going to have worse memory performance in the future as mind abilities reduce with age. Becoming older, human mind becomes less flexible and it is more difficult to get rid of the problems. Therefore, the effect of bad sleep in childhood becomes higher in adulthood that creates many difficulties.

Baranski (2007, p. 182). The research is devoted to the problem on how sleep deprivation affects confidence. However, being limited just by one sleepless day, (p. 183), 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.

However, 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 (p. 184).

To make sure that both objective and subjective visions of the issue have been measured the following methodology was used, meta-cognitive judgments, indicators of confidence-accuracy relation, and accuracy of pre- and post task estimates of performance.

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 tasks they used to.

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.

Lund, H. G. Reider, B. D. Whiting, A. B., & Prichard, J. R. (2010, p. 125). The authors have conducted a profound research aimed at considering the relations between sleep, mood, and stress.

Referring 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.” (p. 125). ESS measured the activities which are 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 (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 influence of these outcomes on children at the adult age.

Therefore, it may be concluded that much research has been conducted in the sphere of sleep and its impact on human mind. Some of research involves the discussion of confidence, another is not, but all the research connected to human mind may be used as the supportive arguments or contradicting ones, if any. Confidence is a state of mind when people are fully satisfied with their performance.

Bad sleep habits ruin human plans, make those behave differently, and reduce brain activity that leads to the reduction of self-assurance. Poor sleep habits while childhood negatively affect human organism. Therefore, the effect is so strong that becoming adults, people still experience the consequences of bad sleep in childhood.

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 affects them and their confidence as adults. Being children, people may experience bad sleeping habits that affect their behavior and thinking processes.

Absence of the appropriate treatment changes nothing, therefore the 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 are sure to transfer to 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.