Enhancing Performance Under Stress: Stress Inoculation Training for Battlefield Airmen
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| Sleep Deprivation. Sleep deprivation is part of current Air Force training for parares- cue that occurs during the single hour extended training day. Sleep deprivation produces a more stressful environment by requiring that trainees perform tasks while considerably fatigued, however it has a number of negative effects that suggest its usage should be limited. Sleep deprivation is potentially beneficial for helping an individual experience the signs of sleep deprivation, but the effect beyond that is limited by the ability to retain information gained in a sleep-deprived state. Research has not yet been conducted to explore these potential benefits. More specifically, it is not known whether airmen who experience sleep deprivation in a training environment are better able to recognize when their performance is being affected by lack of sleep in a deployed environment. There are limits to any potential benefits of sleep deprivation training research indicates that temporal memory (memory for when events occur) is significantly disrupted by pretrain- ing sleep loss (Harrison and Horne, 2000; Morris, Williams, and Lubin, 1960; Walker, 2010). Not only is memory affected by sleep deprivation but so is performance, as sleep-deprived individuals show a lower predictive ability of performance (Walker, 2010, p. 50). And, sleep deprivation results in “microsleeps,” periods when an individual lapses during times where cognitive performance demand is high (Akerstedt, 1987; Bjerner, 1949; Goel et alp Torsvall and Akerstedt, 1987; Williams, Lubin, and Goodnow, 1959). As Goel et al. (2009) summarize, following wakefulness in excess of 16 hours, deficits inattention and executive function tasks are demonstrable through well-validated testing protocols (p. 332). In fact, sleep is essential for putting learning into long-term memory and preparing the body to learn the next day. Walker (2010) relates that when taken together, this collection of findings indicate the critical need for sleep before learning in preparing key neural structures for efficient next-day learning (p. 51). So, although sleep deprivation training may have some important advantages in helping an individual recognize signs of fatigue, we see no argument for further (increased) use as a stress inoculation tool. In contrast, ensuring sufficient opportunities for sleep may facilitate the effectiveness of training. Sleep plays a major role in memory processes, allowing the individual to consolidate and strengthen memories, to assimilate and generalize details, and to build informational sche- mas of knowledge, all of which allow the individual to discover creative next-day solutions to tasks (Walker, 2010, p. 61). Download 339 Kb. Share with your friends:
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