Effect Of Sleep Deprivation On Psychomotor Abilities

Introduction
Sleep is a recurring state of inactivity with a loss of consciousness and a decrease in responsiveness to events in one’s
environment. Sleep also follows certain specific rhythm, as well as a more rapid oscillation. Sleep causes two major
types of physiological effects - First, it effects on the nervous system itself and second, it effects on other systems of
the body. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on selected psychomotor
components in females.

Methodology
Twenty female intervarsity players were selected as subjects for this study. The data on the selected psychomotor
components of reaction time, speed of moment, kinesthetic perception and depth perception keeping the subjects
awaken for 24 hours were collected by administrating the tests related to these variables. Reaction time was measured
by Anand Electronic reaction time Apparatus in seconds, speed of movement by Nelson Speed of Movement Test in
seconds, Kinesthetic perception by Kinesthetic Obstacle Test in points and depth perception by Depth Perception Box
in centimeters.
Result and Discussion of Findings
In order to determine the effect of sleep deprivation on selected psychomotor components of female intervarsity players
t-ratio was computed. Data pertaining to this has been presented in the table.

Reaction Time
Subjects kept deprived of sleep began to exhibit psychotic like symptoms. They also experience temporary visual
illusions, irritation in the eyes because of continuous wakefulness. Things become difficult to perceive and react with
error

Speed of Movement
The subjects kept deprived of sleep might have not overcome the state of fatigue caused by daily activity and have lead
to a feeling of discomfort, tiredness and lethargy. This might be the factor to lengthened the gap between the response
time and the movement of the subject. This would lead to reduce in the speed of movement.

Kinesthetic Perception
As stated earlier that the sleep deprivation lead to psychotic like symptoms. Hence, a mentally fatigue nervous system
do not able to send the message to the joints, muscles and tendons at the right time to make subject aware of his body
part in space could be the reason to give significant differences on the performance of kinesthetic perception .

Depth Perception
Due to sleep deprivation visual impression carried out by the optical nerve which sends the information signals to visual
sensory centre of the brain might work at a slower pace and also at lesser efficiency.

NOTA: O texto com a iconografia está no anexo.

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