Confidence in Judgment Among the Chronically Sleep-Deprived

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that acutely and chronically sleep-deprived individuals are hindered in their performance on cognitive tasks, with pronounced effects on working memory tasks (Durmer & Dinges, 2005). However, little research has been done to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on metacognitive performance. Here, we test whether chronic sleep deprivation affects calibration scores during a working memory task and whether this is dependent on whether participants complete an easy or hard task. Participants aged 18-65 (N = 33) completed a practice mental arithmetic task and made confidence judgments on their expected performance before completing a subsequent 10 mental arithmetic tasks. Results showed that participants were equally calibrated regardless of sleep quantity or task difficulty. These findings could suggest that people can accurately assess their cognitive performance when chronically sleep-deprived, though more research is needed to know whether these findings are accurate. The implications and limitations of the study will be discussed, and directions for future research are proposed.