[HN Gopher] Study: Better sleep habits lead to better college gr...
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Study: Better sleep habits lead to better college grades (2019)
Author : NilsIRL
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-10-30 08:51 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Grades beyond whatever threshold keeps you from having problems
| with the university don't mean squat unless there is more
| academia in your future.
|
| At any given level of college education (undergrad, masters,
| etc.) the overwhelming majority of students will not be
| continuing in academia after that.
|
| Edit: and spare me the low effort comments about GPA and
| internships, the overwhelming majority don't have those
| requirements and the overwhelming majority of those that do don't
| check.
| ecshafer wrote:
| GPA matters less for Tech than other fields. But some places
| (Finance, Accounting) they do check for first jobs I believe.
| Also I was asked for GPA from a few places, but luckily they
| were Government, and Defense Contractors, which I didn't really
| want to work at anyways.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Wonder if this has anything to do with Charlie Munger's
| windowless dorm experiment:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/29/business/ucsb-munger-hall/ind...
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| I wonder about confounding effects. Students who were struggling
| might be more prone to study late and more prone to do poorly on
| tests. (My first year at MIT [when you'd typically take 3.091]
| kicked my ass _and_ I got little sleep; maybe the second caused
| some of the first, but the first definitely caused a lot of the
| second.)
| canjobear wrote:
| Another confound: students with more self control will both
| sleep more and study more effectively.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Prof James Maas has been talking about this for 30+ years. He
| even has the anecdotal claim that dropping morning practice for a
| sleep deprived athlete (on his advice) contributed to her winning
| an Olympic Gold Medal in 2004.
| tomhoward wrote:
| Or: people who are relaxed enough to be able to go to sleep early
| are more likely to do better in tests.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| And doing well academically is a pretty plausible cause of
| being relaxed in such a setting.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I have very bad sleep quality because of my chronic disease it
| definitely shows; lack of concentration, I forget fast, bad
| cognition etc.
| sklargh wrote:
| The military has such an odd no-sleep culture. "Hey, let's load
| up a submarine full of nuclear weapons and a nuclear reactor and
| then generate a schedule that requires everyone on board to
| function at a cognitive deficit with no spatial references."
|
| Works until it doesn't.
| tokai wrote:
| As I understand it its bcs the military wants organizations
| that can function under long term stress and pressure. If
| personnel is always sleep deprived you will find the processes
| that doesn't work in that kind of environment, before you go in
| hot.
| skohan wrote:
| Another perplexing one is hospitals. Sleep is one of the most
| important factors in self-healing. However for someone in a
| long hospital stay, rooms often don't get completely dark,
| there are machines which make noise and light, and patients are
| often woken up throughout the night for various tests and
| procedures. It seems like the opposite of what you would want
| to do to make someone healthy.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| This was shocking to me the first time I had to stay in a
| hospital for multiple nights. The door was always kept open
| for nurses, and the hallway lights and noise was constant. I
| had to share a room with a patient who kept the lights and
| television on 24/7 and, whenever she was awake, was loudly
| complaining to someone on her phone or threatening to kill
| the nurses for not giving her enough medication. I had no
| option for another room and had to "recover" between multiple
| operations in these conditions. My first week out of the
| hospital was focused on recovering from the hospital
| conditions, not my actual medical issue.
| davidjytang wrote:
| My wife was recovering from surgery and stayed in hospital
| for several days.
|
| Every 4 hours, a nurse would bust in through the door so hard
| the door would bounce back almost like a western saloon, in
| they push their cart with computer, and YELL, "We are just
| gonna take the blood pressure!"
|
| Occasionally, we did get one nurse who would do this with
| tact.
| siva7 wrote:
| The medical personell is also usually over-worked with
| massive sleep deficit and odd shifts.
| skohan wrote:
| Yeah I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but the
| concept of how medical residency is handled in the US is
| just insane.
| pddpro wrote:
| Oh you'd love to know that William Stewart Halsted, the
| father of residency basically was cocaine and morphine
| addict who thought that doctors needed to completely
| immerse themselves in the hospital environment and didn't
| need sleep at all.
| tokai wrote:
| Medical residency was instituted by a cocaine addict. It
| doesn't make it less insane, but it explains a lot.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Many countries follow that pattern of having patients
| subject to physiologically unreliable personnel; others
| impose some limiting rules ("No, doctor, you cannot be in
| the panel for the examinations of medicine students on
| Saturday: on Monday you operate in the surgery room and
| you are _required_ to rest, just like personnel in civil
| aviation "); nonetheless, that _some_ goodsensical
| boundaries are set is not a warranty for a properly set
| up system - also in those territories I have seen other
| personnel completely untrained on basic procedures (like
| nurses staring at you waiting silent for a minute, or in
| stillness expecting something inexplicit, then shouting
| "SOOOO?!" bovinely).
|
| Anyway, yes, I consider territories in which the use
| sleep deprived medical personnel is tolerated a strong
| sign of lack of civilization, when the important factor
| appears that some of them state "Yes we are used to it"
| (?! !!!) instead of, say, "We were unduly forced by
| understaffing" - that some of them have no idea of the
| difference is a _huge_ alarm bell.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Have there been any studies looking into this? It seems so
| obvious it would lead to better results and yet hospitals
| make zero effort.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| It's on purpose, they want soldiers to be able to function well
| in high stress and pressure situations. They do this so they
| train under the same conditions they would be in war. It is
| most definitely not healthy tho. I think the military does not
| really care about the health of its personnel during and after
| their duty.
| [deleted]
| alfongj wrote:
| There's so many possible confounding effects that it's hard to
| take this at face value.
| AsyncBanana wrote:
| This was not surprising, as many people already knew sleep helps
| your brain remember things. However, it is good data to back this
| up for people skeptical of the benefits and the "cutoff" time was
| interesting.
| m0zg wrote:
| Sleep is instrumental in forming long term memories IIRC. So it's
| not at all surprising that better sleep quality would result in
| improved grades, seeing how they largely depend on you being able
| to understand and remember stuff for the tests, and other
| academic activities.
|
| Though I'm surprised that physical exercise did not correlate. Is
| positive effect on mental performance is well established in the
| literature. I suppose "more studies are needed" (which means "we
| don't know" in academia-speak).
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _we found ... zero correlation with fitness, which I must say
| was disappointing ..." Grossman_ [3.091 - Solid-State Chemistry,
| who initially promoted the study to find this other correlation]
| _says_
|
| > _it's the sleep you get during the days when learning is
| happening that matter most_
|
| > _there appears to be a certain cutoff for bedtimes, such that
| going to bed later results in poorer performance, even if the
| total amount of sleep is the same ... if you go to bed after 2,
| your performance starts to go down even if you get the same seven
| hours_
|
| > _those who got relatively consistent amounts of sleep each
| night did better_
|
| > _The overall course grades for students averaging 6.5 hours of
| sleep were down 50% from other students who averaged just one
| hour more sleep. Similarly, those who had just a half-hour more
| night-to-night variation in their total sleep time had grades
| that dropped 45 percent below others with less variation._
| mewse wrote:
| This study is examining correlation, not causation, and it
| doesn't appear to provide any evidence to support the article
| title's claim that changing one's sleeping habits will change
| one's college grades.
|
| The study provided evidence that people who have good grades on
| average tend to get "better" sleep on average (according to
| whatever criteria FitBit's sleep tracking feature uses) than
| those who have worse grades. It doesn't provide evidence for any
| stronger statement than that; just that good grades and quality
| of sleep seem to tend to go together.
|
| It _certainly_ doesn't provide any evidence to support the
| title's claim "Better sleep habits lead to better college
| grades"; that changing sleeping habits improves grades.
|
| That would be an interesting study if anyone finds a way to get
| it past the ethics panels.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Or it could be that some students don't need to sacrifice sleep
| to succeed.
|
| I spent most of my degree goofing off with the regular
| interruptions of sitting in lectures, writing notes, and maybe
| review them once before taking a test.
|
| I always made sure to get enough sleep to be mentally sharp. If
| I did that, the act of writing notes in the lecture was enough
| to lock the information in my head.
|
| Later on in college when class got more difficult, my best
| friends and I would talk about what we learned each day. We
| taught each other our own subjects and teaching can be the best
| way to learn.
|
| Not everyone is so fortunate to have the massive advantages I
| did. I had to be careful with money but never needed loans or a
| job. This let me focus solely on getting good enough grades to
| graduate.
| elisom78 wrote:
| Good quality sleep is very important for our health
| (https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-sleep-psychology/),
| because it helps to improve concentration and productivity, even
| increases the ability to solve problems. Therefore, it is so
| important for students to adhere to sleep norms, otherwise there
| will be problems with good grades.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The data presented by Prof. Patrick Winston in one lesson of
| 6.034 at the MIT, including the slide "[if you skip sleep to
| study] you might as well get drunk", with the examples of the
| studies made on Marines, must come to mind.
|
| The slides, are, I see, available, at
| http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.034f/sleep.pdf
|
| The lesson is https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-
| and-compu... (the part warning the students about this potential
| pitfall in their method is at the end of the lesson).
| nradov wrote:
| I never skipped sleep to study. I frequently skipped sleep to
| complete homework assignments by the due date.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That seems like a distinction without a difference. (How is
| doing a problem set not studying?)
| cglace wrote:
| The timing. HW usually does not directly proceed a test.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| "Sleep deprivation: you might as well get drunk"
|
| > _You don 't learn without problem solving ... The custodians
| of knowledge about how much sleep you need[, a]nd what happens
| if you don't get it[,] is the United States Army. Because
| they're extremely interested in what happens when you cross 10
| or 12 times zones, and have no sleep, and have to perform. ...
| [A]fter the first Gulf War, which was the most studied war in
| history, ... there were after action reports ... full of
| examples like this. The US Forces ... drawn up for the night
| ... up for about 36 hours straight ... [w]hen, much to their
| amazement, across their field-of-view came a column of Iraqi
| vehicles ... both sides enormously surprised. A firefight broke
| out ... in acts of fratricidal fire. And the interesting thing
| is that all these folks here swore in the after action reports
| that they were firing straight ahead. And what happened was
| their ability to put ordnance on target was not impaired at
| all. But their idea of where the target was, what the target
| was, whether it was a target, was all screwed up. So this led
| to a lot of experiments in which people were sleep deprived.
| ... These are Army Rangers. It doesn't get any tougher than
| this._
|
| _[T]hey had ... fire control teams ... their job is to take
| information from an observer, over here, about a target, over
| here. And tell the artillery, over here, where to fire. So they
| kept some of these folks up for 36 hours straight. And ... they
| all said, we 're doing great. And at that time they were
| bringing fire down on hospitals, mosques, churches, schools,
| and themselves. Because, they couldn't do the calculations
| anymore, after 36 hours without sleep._
|
| _And now you say to me, well I 'm a MIT student, I want to see
| the data. So let's have a look at the data._ [Slides at
| http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.034f/sleep.pdf ] _Very simple
| calculations you have to do in your head, like adding numbers,
| spelling words, and things like that ... after 72 hours without
| sleep, your performance relative to what you were at the
| beginning is about 30%. So loss of sleep destroys ability._
|
| _Sleep loss accumulates. So you say, well I need eight hours
| of sleep - and what you need, by the way, varies - but I 'm
| going to get by with seven hours of sleep. So after 20 days of
| one hour's worth of sleep deprivation, you're down about 25%.
| ..._
|
| _So you might say, well does caffeine help? Or ... naps in
| this case. And the answer is, yes, a little bit. Some people
| argue that you get the more effect out of the sleep that you do
| get if you divide it into two. Winston Churchill always took a
| three hour nap in the afternoon. He said that way he got a day
| and a half 's worth of work out of every day. He got the full
| amount of sleep[, b]ut he divided it into two pieces. Here's
| the caffeine one. So caffeine does help._
|
| _And now you say, well, shoot, I think I 'm going to take it
| kind of easy this semester. And I'll just work hard during the
| week before finals. Maybe I won't even bother sleeping for the
| 24 hours before the 6.034 final. That's OK. Well let's see what
| will happen. So let's work the numbers. Here is 24 hours. And
| that's where your effectiveness is after 24 hours. Now let's go
| over to the same amount of effectiveness on the blood alcohol
| curve. And it's about the level at which you would be legally
| drunk. So I guess what we ought to do is to check everybody as
| they come in for the 6.034 final, and arrest you if you've been
| 24 hours without sleep. And not let you take any finals again,
| for a year. So if you do all that, you might as well get
| drunk._
|
| (Patrick Winston, lesson (#10) for the 6.034 - Artificial
| Intelligence course at the MIT, 2010)
| trevorishere wrote:
| I wonder how those forms of sleep deprivation compares to
| those with mania or hypomania (i.e., bipolar I/Ii) and the
| amount of sleep they get in those cycles (none to 1-3 hours).
| kolbe wrote:
| Better sleep habits are CORRELATED with better college grades.
| This was not a causal study.
| Oddskar wrote:
| > Another surprising finding is that there appears to be a
| certain cutoff for bedtimes, such that going to bed later results
| in poorer performance, even if the total amount of sleep is the
| same.
|
| I would perhaps rephrase this as "people who stimulate themselves
| enough that they stay up late have poor quality sleep".
|
| I for sure experience this myself when I don't properly wind down
| my mind several hours before going to sleep.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Not really. First of all, of course, the point is that bad
| sleep impairs cognition; the suggested point seems to be that
| there are "appointments" with scheduled internal operations
| (whatever: glial cleanup etc.), and that if they are missed it
| is missed maintenance.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| Perhaps it is the case that there is a certain group of students
| who do well in class and sleep well? The article speaks of
| correlations at first, then immediately jumps into causation.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Probably because it makes extreme sense to treat,
| provisionally, in practice and within one's set of tentative
| hypotesis, that correlation as a causation. Well functioning
| individuals increasingly behave erratically under sleep
| deprivation. Inductively "billions" of humans presumably got it
| as an experience, that rest dysfunction "correlated" with
| imperfect performance, with clear direction about which side
| may have conditioned the other. The warning is all on the size
| of the effect, not on the correlative factors.
|
| Secondary factors such as vicious circles of struggle, anxiety
| etc. aside.
| 8eye wrote:
| another good argument for people from low income families who may
| may have trouble staying in college due to subpar living
| conditions which affect their grades.
|
| i've read people's comments on some other forums (not here)
| blaming poor people for not studying or trying hard enough and
| that is the reason they are poor. which is obviously crazy to
| think that about everyone who comes from the lower class is lazy
| or not trying hard enough.
|
| i am thinking about a lot commuters, who live at home because
| they can't afford a dorm or an off campus apartment. i've met
| many people who would just stop going to college or lose multiple
| days only to find out the only car in the family broke and that
| persons grades were hurting so they later on ended up dropping
| out.
|
| always good to understand where people may be coming from
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > which is obviously crazy to think that about everyone who
| comes from the lower class is lazy or not trying hard enough.
|
| This is an extremely common belief I've seen from my dad's
| generation. His parents worked hard and succeeded, therefore
| anyone who didn't succeed, didn't work hard.
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