second, dreams mostly occur in REM and finally, participants did on average go into REM every 90 minutes showing ultradian rhythms. Dement (1960) compared participants who had been deprived of REM sleep with a control group who had been deprived of the same amount of NREM sleep. He found that the REM deprived group were more irritable, more aggressive and unable to concentrate on various tasks. Borbely (1986) found that REM deprived individuals made 31 attempts to re-enter REM on the first night of deprivation (called REM re-bound), 51 attempts on the second night and over 60 attempts on the third… Dement and Borbely’s research suggests that REM is a distinct and significant stage of the ultradian rhythm and also important for our psychological well-being. [Randy Gardner pictured trying to recognise scents] Evaluation to consider… Individual differences A significant problem when studying sleep cycles is the differences observed in people. This makes investigating patterns difficult. Tucker et al (2007) differences in participants in terms of the duration of each stage, particularly stages 3 and 4 (NREM). This suggests there may be innate individual differences in ultradian rhythms which means it’s worth focusing on these differences during investigations into sleep cycles. Lack of ecological Sleep cycles are usually investigated with a high degree of control in validity sleep laboratories. Participants will wear caps with electrodes to monitor EEG patterns and asked to sleep and then be woken up at various points during their cycle. This is both invasive for the participant as well as being very artificial and may lead them to sleep in a way that doesn’t represent their ordinary sleep cycle. This lack of ecological validity could lead to false conclusions. Flexible Randy Gardner’s experience of remaining awake for 264 hours and subsequently recovering 70% of stage 4 and 50% of his REM sleep and little of the other stages. This suggests the degree of flexibility in terms of the different stages may not be as as psychologists believed. ‘fixed’ However, we should consider that Gardner’s results could be unique to him, for example an older individual may have very different results in the sleep they recovered. This means generalisation of such specific cases could be difficult.
second, dreams mostly occur in REM and finally, participants did on average go into REM every 90 minutes showing ultradian rhythms. Dement (1960) compared participants who had been deprived of REM sleep with a control group who had been deprived of the same amount of NREM sleep. He found that the REM deprived group were more irritable, more aggressive and unable to concentrate on various tasks. Borbely (1986) found that REM deprived individuals made 31 attempts to re-enter REM on the first night of deprivation (called REM re-bound), 51 attempts on the second night and over 60 attempts on the third… Dement and Borbely’s research suggests that REM is a distinct and significant stage of the ultradian rhythm and also important for our psychological well-being. [Randy Gardner pictured trying to recognise scents] Evaluation to consider… Individual differences A significant problem when studying sleep cycles is the differences observed in people. This makes investigating patterns difficult. Tucker et al (2007) differences in participants in terms of the duration of each stage, particularly stages 3 and 4 (NREM). This suggests there may be innate individual differences in ultradian rhythms which means it’s worth focusing on these differences during investigations into sleep cycles. Lack of ecological validity Sleep cycles are usually investigated with a high degree of control in sleep laboratories. Participants will wear caps with electrodes to monitor EEG patterns and asked to sleep and then be woken up at various points during their cycle. This is both invasive for the participant as well as being very artificial and may lead them to sleep in a way that doesn’t represent their ordinary sleep cycle. This lack of ecological validity could lead to false conclusions. Flexible Randy Gardner’s experience of remaining awake for 264 hours and subsequently recovering 70% of stage 4 and 50% of his REM sleep and little of the other stages. This suggests the degree of flexibility in terms of the different stages may not be as ‘fixed’ as psychologists believed. However, we should consider that Gardner’s results could be unique to him, for example an older individual may have very different results in the sleep they recovered. This means generalisation of such specific cases could be difficult.
biopsychology_pack_2018.docx