Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Psychology Sleep Lab Journal

Written by P. A. Owens on September 13, 2018

Sleep Journal
Problem: What is my general sleep cycle?
Hypothesis: I tend to wake up at night only if I am too hot or cold or have to use the restroom, and typically other than that I will sleep through the night entirely. I typically have very few dreams if any.
Experiment: Keep a sleep journal over the course of four days and record what is observed.
Data:
September 9, 2018
     In bed at: 10:50pm
     Fell asleep: 2:25am
     I slept through the entire night, probably because I went to sleep so late. For some reason I could not fall asleep easily that night at all, hence the 2:25am time frame.
     I woke up for school at 9:00am; I stayed in bed for about 20 minutes. I am not at all a morning person and I always need a little time to wake up and become my normal, more assertive self.
     I remained drowsy until about 1:00pm, which was about 20 minutes after my history lecture was concluded.
September 10, 2018
     In bed at: 11:00pm
     Fell asleep: 12:15am
     I woke up one time, at 4:20am, that night. Due to being hot and even sweating slightly. I was hot because I wore a hoodie to bed and forgot to take it off before falling asleep. I took off my hoodie, slept with the covers off, and went back to sleep within 15 minutes.
     Woke up again at 8:00am, went back to sleep, because I knew I didn’t have any classes that day due to the hurricane, until 9:40am and got up at 10:00am.
September 11, 2018
     After playing hide and seek in the dark, outside with a few of my siblings, I went to bed at 10:45pm
     Fell asleep: 12:00am
     I fell asleep with my hoodie on again, so at 5:20am, I woke up hot and slightly sweaty and took of the hoodie. After taking the hoodie off, I went right back to sleep.
     Woke up: 8:25am, stayed in bed to wake up all the way until 8:45am. Again I didn’t have any classes that day so I could sleep in a little bit.
September 12, 2018
After playing the boardgame Clue, and        winning by complete chance, I was in bed by 10:50pm.
After watching a few YouTube videos, I got super sleepy and fell asleep around 11:50pm.
I slept through the entire night with no interruptions and woke up the next morning at 9am. I got out of bed around 9:15am.

Conclusion: My hypothesis was correct according to the fact that I tend to wake up if I am too hot or cold, and that other than that I typically sleep through the night without any interruptions and that dreams are very rare for me.
Observations: One thing that really stood out to me is that I woke up 2 nights due to being too hot while wearing my hoodie to sleep. Also the fact that I tend to wake up around the same time every morning. It must be that my circadian rhythm over time has become to wake up at those times every morning. I’ve always found it interesting that this happens and was curious as to why it happens. Now I have an idea as an explanation for it. I have also noticed that I typically am asleep around the same times every night, with the exception of the first night of course, I don’t know what was happening that day. The fact that I had no dreams, that I remember, was also quite interesting to me. I am quite curious if I never got into a deep enough sleep each night, e.i. REM sleep. “REM sleep is a relatively psychological active type of sleep when most of a person’s dreams take place, whereas NREM sleep spans from lighter stages to a much deeper, more restful kind of sleep.” (Ciccarelli & White, 2017) So perhaps I am rarely in the REM stage of sleep and that is why I rarely have any dreams.




Citations:
Ciccarelli, Saundra K., & J. Noland White.  Psychology (REVEL with e-text/access code), 5th Edition.  Person 2017.  ISBN:  978-0134715305

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