<div class="description">
<p>Fatigue due to sleep deprivation is a major factor in
both mental and physical performance. Failure of Recruits
to receive the proper quality and quantity of sleep can be
detrimental to a Recruit’s safety and can diminish the
amount of information learned during training. During the
1980s, the sleep regimen was decreased to 6 hours of sleep
per night. In 2002, a decision was made to give U.S. Navy
Recruits an additional two hours of sleep per night. This
latest modification was selected to coincide with the
acknowledged adolescent/young adult circadian rhythms.
The purpose of this study was to determine the impact
of the new eight-hour sleep regimen using standardized test
scores as a performance measure. One year of data with the
eight-hour sleep regimen is compared to two separate years
when only six hours of sleep was allowed.  There is a significant difference, F(2, 33) = 29.82, p &lt;
.0001, between the test scores of Recruits receiving 6-hours
of sleep and 8-hours of sleep. On average test scores rose
by 11 percent with the additional sleep. The odds of
observing such a difference by chance is less than one in
ten million.
</p>
<br>Subjects: Fatigue; Mental fatigue; Sleep deprivation; Performance</div>
<div class="fn value">
Andrews, Charles H.</div>
Internet Archive identifier