Martella, D. 1, 2 , Roca, J. 3 , Marotta, A. 3 , López-Ramón, M. 3 , Castro, C. 3 , Lupiáñez, J. 3 & Fuentes, L. J. 2
1 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). Donostia. Spain
2 Dpto. de Psicología Básica y Metodología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Murcia, 30100 Murcia Spain
3 Dpto. de Psicología Experimental y Fisiología del Comportamiento, Universidad de Granada, Campus Universitario Cartuja, 18071 Granada Spain
This study aims to assess the effects of sleep deprivation (SD) on attention performance. Specifically, we analyse the effect of presenting infrequent and unpredictable stimuli at the same time of measuring the functioning of the three attentional networks, under sleep-deprivation and not-sleep deprivation conditions, by means of the ANTI-Vigilance (ANTI-V). Thus, measures of tonic and phasic alertness, orienting, and executive control were obtained. A sleep deprivation has been conducted with two main objectives: a) Provide further evidence of the validity of the ANTI-V as an effective measure of vigilance, and b) Analyze the effects of SD on the three attentional functions. Twenty-five participants completed the ANTI-V on two sessions: first, on a morning after an usual sleep time and, again, after a 24h SD. Results revealed that the participants were slower and committed more errors after SD. Also, they were less able to detect the infrequent stimuli and their sensitivity (d’) was decreased. The phasic alertness score was diminished, while the orienting and executive control obtained similar scores in both sessions. These data suggest that the ANTI-V is effectively reflecting the vigilance performance. Also, some interesting differences from previous studies in the attentional functioning after sleep deprivation have been found.