To Study or to Sleep: How Seeing the Effect of Sleep Deprivation Changed Students' Choices

Adequate sleep is essential for students to be able to solve challenging problems effectively. After many years of advising students to get enough sleep the night before their final exam, two studies were conducted with students in introductory physics classes to investigate their sleep habits. In the first previously published study, few students got adequate sleep and there was a significant positive correlation between hours of sleep and final exam score. In the second study the following semester, students were shown the results of the first study. Showing students the negative effect that sleep deprivation the night before a final exam had on exam scores in a prior class appears to have changed students' sleep choices the night before their own final exam, based on students' self-reports of sleep. Once students saw evidence that staying up all night studying for a final exam would likely hurt their score on the exam, class average hours of reported sleep significantly increased.