English

DTIC ADA501875: Sleep and Performance Measures in Soldiers Undergoing Military Relevant Training

Inadequate sleep is known to impair a variety of cognitive capacities, including attention, vigilance, concentration, and aspects of higher order reasoning and judgment. The ability to unobtrusively measure fatigue and predict its effects on cognitive performance is vital to successful military operations. Wrist actigraphy's ability to accurately measure and predict performance in militarily relevant activities is not well validated. Healthy military volunteers (N = 108) wore wrist activity monitors while undergoing military training. Actigraphic data were analyzed and used to predict academic success. Regardless of course type or test content, academic performances were significantly predicted by total sleep time, sleep latency, number of immobile minutes, and sleep fragmentation, but not total activity. Academic performance was significantly related to the amount and quality of sleep obtained within the 48-hour period preceding the exams. Actigraphy appears to be a valid and unobtrusive method for predicting academic performance in military courses, although participant compliance and detection of off-wrist periods need to be improved.

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