Theoretical Framework

Sleep deficiency is progressively being shown to be a significant impediment to learning, cognition, and
memory in adolescents. Sleep disorders affect behavior, social competence, and quality of life, and they
are more common than educators and health professionals realize. Students are suffering from sleep
deprivation, which is having an adverse effect on their academic performance.

Experimental and modeling studies of the impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance have
mostly concentrated on global outcome measures so far (Durmer & Dinges, 2005; Van Dongen, 2004).
Overall output degrades as a result of the amount of time spent awake, which is influenced by the
circadian rhythm (Van Dongen & Dinges, 2005). However, little is known about the impact of sleep
deprivation on specific performance outcomes, such as RT distributions, or improvements in specific
cognitive components, such as decision-making processes. Attempts are being made to close this gap
using computational modeling based on cognitive architectures (Gunzelmann, Gluck, Price, Van Dongen,
& Dinges, 2007), but these attempts must be driven by detailed knowledge about which cognitive
processes are influenced by sleep deprivation and how.

As a way of evaluating the concept of sleep deprivation for each framework specified, we describe the
framework's foundation, framed predictors, key relationships between predictors and outcomes, and
limitations.

Durmer & Dinges, 2005

Sleep loss caused by disease-related sleep fragmentation such as sleep apnea and restless legs
syndrome causes neurocognitive function declines similar to those observed in sleep restriction studies.
Individual vulnerability to sleep loss may play a more critical role than previously thought in
performance deficiencies associated with sleep disorders. Attempts indicate that individual vulnerability
to sleep loss may play a more critical role than previously thought.

Van Dongen, 2004

Sleep deprivation caused neurobehavioral deficiencies that differed substantially amongst people but
remained consistent among them. Interindividual discrepancies in neurobehavioral reactions to sleep
deprivation were not solely due to sleep history differences. Rather, they involved a trait-like differential
susceptibility to sleep deprivation deficiency, for which no neurobiologic correlations have been found.

Gunzelmann, Gluck, Price, Van Dongen, & Dinges, 2007

Sleep deprivation reduces one's ability to perform cognitive tasks, but hypotheses vary from suggesting
a general decrease in cognitive performance to alleging severe executive function deficits.