No effect of sleep restriction on reading the mind in the eyes Sundelin, 1Department
1,2,3 T. ,
& Axelsson,
1,2 J.
of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. 2Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University. 3Department of Psychology, Stockholm University
Take-home message: People are equally good (or bad) at understanding others’ expressions after sleep restriction as after sufficient sleep Background The ability to “mentalize”, to understand what another person is thinking or feeling, is a major component of social intelligence. Several studies indicate that sleep loss may affect social emotional functioning, such as empathy and empathic accuracy, but there is a lack of knowledge regarding mentalization ability following sleep deprivation. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (BaronCohen et al., 2001) is a commonly used measure for the ability to infer others’ mental states. It is a forced-choice procedure where 36 pictures of people’s eyes are shown along with four options of the mental state of that person (see Fig 1). The average score in healthy populations ranges from 26-28. amused
relaxed
Method 32 participants (17 women), aged 19-47 (mean 24.2±6.6y), performed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test after two nights of normal sleep (8h in bed) and after two nights of restricted sleep (4h in bed) in a counter-balanced order at least one week apart (see Table 1 for sleep data). The test was performed at the same time on both occasions, ranging from 13:30-15:30 between participants.
insisting
Fig 1. Example image from Reading the Mind in the Eyes.
p
Accuracy
28.7 (3.62)
28.8 (3.19)
0.85
Response time
6.93 (2.13)
6.53 (1.54)
0.29
Table 2. Average accuracy and response times (in seconds) after two nights of normal sleep and two nights of restricted sleep. Standard deviation in brackets.
Results
Discussion
There was no difference in accuracy or response time between the two conditions (see Table 1).
Two nights of sleep restriction did not affect participants' ability to mentalize in this task. Attributing another person's mental state may thus be a skill resilient to moderate sleep loss, despite other possible deficits in social perception and cognition.
Time slept
Normal sleep
Restricted sleep
7:56 (0:25)
4:13 (0:29)
Table 1. Average sleep times in h:mm. Standard deviation in brackets.
joking
Normal sleep
Restricted sleep
Tina Sundelin, PhD E-mail:
[email protected] Department of Clinical Neuroscience Nobels väg 9, Solna, Sweden
Reference: Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwrights, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. J. Child Psychol. Psychiat., 42(2). pp 241-251.