The effects of a brief recuperative nap on vigilance and the speed-accuracy trade-off

Abstract

Sleep deprivation can impair a number of cognitive faculties. Daytime napping has been proposed as way to remediate the negative consequences of sleep deprivation. Yet the evidence that short naps improve cognitive performance is limited. The goal of the current work was to examine the potential recuperative effects of a nap on alertness using a Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and perceptual decision-making in a speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) task while recording magnetic fields from the cortex with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Two groups received 3 hours of sleep, but only one had a 20-min nap prior to testing. The nap appeared to have a small improvement on reaction time in the PVT. However, the nap had no apparent effect on performance in the SAT task, nor did it affect a perceptual index of information processing as measured by MEG. These findings suggest that a short-term nap might improve alertness but not necessarily decision-making processes.