Sleep deprivation and its effects on communication during individual and collaborative tasks

Benjamin C Holding,Mats Lekander,Tina Sundelin,John Axelsson

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-39271-6

Benjamin C Holding, Mats Lekander + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-39271-6

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Abstract

Sleep loss has been shown to cause impairments in a number of aspects central for successful communication, ranging from poorer linguistic comprehension to alterations in speech prosody. However, the effect of sleep loss on actual communication is unknown. This study investigated how a night of sleep deprivation affected performance during multiple tasks designed to test verbal communication. Healthy participants (N = 183) spent 8–9 hours per night in bed for three nights and were then randomised to either one night of total sleep deprivation or a fourth night with 8–9 hours in bed. The following day, participants completed two tasks together with another participant: a model-building task and a word-description task. Differences in performance of these tasks were assessed alongside speaking duration, speaking volume, and speaking volume consistency. Additionally, participants individually completed a verbal fluency assessment. Performance on the model-building task was worse if the model-builder was sleep deprived, whereas sleep deprivation in the instruction-giver predicted an improvement. Word-description, verbal fluency, speech duration, speaking volume, and speaking volume consistency were not affected. The results suggest that sleep deprivation leads to changes in communicative performance during instructive tasks, while simpler word-description tasks appear resilient.

Highlights

Effective communication relies on diverse cognitive abilities, such as attention[1], perspective taking[2], and language ability[3], and impairment of any of these abilities can decrease one’s communicative capacity[4,5]
There is a considerable overlap between abilities impaired by sleep loss and those required for successful communication
We investigated the impact of a single night of total sleep deprivation on the ability to communicate

Summary

Introduction

Effective communication relies on diverse cognitive abilities, such as attention[1], perspective taking[2], and language ability[3], and impairment of any of these abilities can decrease one’s communicative capacity[4,5]. Simulated night work has been found to impair auditory attention and comprehension[17], and there is evidence of poorer perception of speech in noisy environments following sleep deprivation, potentially relating to impairments in sensory gating[18] This suggests that sleep loss impairs the ability to understand what others are saying, at least in longer tasks and when speech is less distinct. The characteristics of speech may be affected by sleep deprivation; people have been reported to slur[19] and pause more[20], as well as speak more monotonously[10], more slowly[19,20], and with less energy/intensity[21] when sleep deprived These effects have tended to be small and the studies run in solitary lab conditions.

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