Is anybody aware of experiments comparing the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation where the subject is either deprived using punishment or deprived using reward? I am going to guess that one would find wildly different effects of the same level of sleep deprivation.
The methods designed by the Rechtschaffen group are still gold standard because of the excellent control groups. But think about it: is the disk over water method anything but a special case of Zeligman´s learned helplessness paradigm? Also, turning to humans, sleep dep can be used as torture, yet, the sleep deprivation that e.g. the US army was accused of using is way less that e.g. sailors routinely do to themselves. Of course, the deprivation is nothing compared to the 14 days which the world record of staying awake voluntarily. Thus, is it possible that the big difference is between imposed vs. voluntary sleep restriction – something that is not-related to sleep restriction per se.
Great thought Karl. I expect you are correct. I.e.where SD is rewarded, iperformance will be maintained more than when SD is administered as a punishment. Only human study I can think of was Jim Hornes work showing that you could pay people to stay awake longer and that it increased alertness relative to controls. This may be simple operant conditioning. That is, SD as a reward increases the frequency of the behaviour. Where error free performance is the behaviour then reward maintains performance.
More broadly, I think you have raised an important theoretical question. That is, SD is potentially something other than merely SD, it can be another way to reward or a punish. However, if this is the case, is it actually SD in the way we consider SD. That is, is it merely a reward or punishment and the notion of SD is immaterial in understanding the reward/punishment effect.
I have a practical question for you. In shift work, it is hard to decide whether the sleep deprivation is reward or punishment. It is probably a bit of both. e.g. I want to be a doctor but I hate having to work long shifts at night. How will your distinction help us better understand real world performance in shift workers. I am not suggesting you are arguing that but I am interested in your point of view.
Sleep deprivation is inherently punishing, given the established inescapability of sleep- it is a biological need. The apparent major beneficiary of sleep is the brain, and so sleep deprivation's effects sensibly fall primarily into categories and degrees of brain, hence mental impairment (with the notable exception of effective relief from major depression). Efforts to reward sleep deprivation, therefore, begin at a strong biological disadvantage. That said- some methods of sleep deprivation can be additionally physically punishing, as from falling into chilled water, and that poses challenges for sorting out sleep needs from added stress and stressors. Conceivably (sorry for the pun) physiological rewards like sex might provide positive reinforcers opposite to some negative reinforcers like cold, to offer comparisons between biological rewards.
I'm not aware of studies designed to compare punishment versus reward on sleep deprivation. The US military has done quite a lot of work on performance during extended sleep deprivation. In some, subjects were extremely high performance achievers (Navy SEALs and other elite forces, I believe), whose career opportunities were contingent on performance in extreme environments. Thus, excelling under sleep deprivation could offer high reward, while failure could offer very negative consequences. I do not have the reference, unfortunately, but one study of long deprivation (on Navy SEALs, I believe) pointed out the uniqueness of sleep deprivation among extreme environments- for the very rare occurrence of having several subjects withdraw themselves from the study, with likely career consequences. (I suspect the study was by either Laverne Johnson, or Michael Bonnet). A second common finding is that sleep deprivation primarily affects higher order mental performance (decision making) while sparing rote behavior (even complex step-wise calculations). Studies of artillery support staff responsible for calculating trajectories to targets might also be interesting to consider for reward/punishment motivators. Proper calculations produce rewarding successful launches, while miscalculations could cause unacceptable losses. Extended sleep deprivation has been established to produce accurately calculated, but dangerously misidentified targets. Thus, even in situations with high reward/punishing alternatives, sleep deprivation seems unable to achieve rewards even when strong consequences for failure are the only choice.
Good question. I appreciate you are thinking about exogenous reward versus punishment, but under the broad heading of 'different possible meanings of sleep deprivation', l would make a clinical observation. Mania is a pathological state in which endogenous reward activation disturbs sleep. People with mania report both decreased need for sleep and difficulty falling asleep, both of which seem to result from endogenous over-activation of their reward system.
Fascinating discussion. Thomas, if you happen to find the reference on extended SD (possibly of Navy SEALs), I would be most interested!
I study sleep in insects and it would be fascinating to find individuals (e.g., honey bee guards) that are higher performers under SD conditions or when invasion is more likely than other individuals (e.g., nurse bees, less immediately exposed to danger of invaders).
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