Abstract
30 college students who have the habit of lunch time napping (LTN) participated in experiments under two different conditions: Having lunch time napping and not having lunch time napping. They were asked to complete three tasks in-cluding vigilance reaction, short-term memory, addition arithmetic; their performance was re-corded automatically by computer during 3 dif-ferent periods in the afternoon and early eve-ning. The analysis about the experimental data showed that: as for habitual nappers, midafter-noon nap zone existed, LTN played a very im-portant role in overcoming it, and did great help in enhancing their vigilance in the afternoon and early evening, however, LTN didn’t bring sig-nificant positive effect to executing complex tasks (such as short-term memory and addition task) at the periods of time 16:30-17:30, 20:00- 21:00. Finally, this article discussed the conclu-sions and its significance.
Highlights
Lunch time napping is very prevalent in China
In order to analyze the effect of lunch time napping (LTN) on human arithmetic calculation performance, this research made the comparative analysis of calculation speed and calculation accuracy rate under two different experimental conditions and in three experimental periods, the results shown in Table 3 and Table 4
This research showed that as for the subjects who didn’t take LTN, their mental work performance at 14:30-15:30 is significantly worse than that at 16:30-17:30 and 20:00-21:00, while as for those who took LTN, their mental work performance almost is the same in three experimental periods, which indicated that midafternoon nap zone as Hayashi et al [10], Broughton mentioned exists objectively for habitual nappers [11], this experiment provided the direct evidence for their standpoint
Summary
Lunch time napping is very prevalent in China. The farmers often take LTN only in summer because they need avoid the hot sun’s radiation at noon; more and more mental workers take LTN, they usually take LTN all the year round, which can’t be explained by the weather. Chinese literature usually only describes people’s subjective feeling, few of them studies the effects of LTN based on the actual work performance. In most of relative English literature, the napping time is often in the afternoon or in the evening, even in a few of researches about LTN, the duration of napping is very short, which is not consistent with the situation of China. Hayashi et al studied the effects of both afternoon nap and lunch time nap on mood, performance and EEG activity [7,8]. For the two pieces of reasons above, this research is to study the effects of LTN on habitual ‘nappers’ mental work efficiency in the afternoon and early evening through experiment
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