Sleeping Habits Essay

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Changing Sleeping Habits This behavioral experiment will be on one of the human bodies most basic and everyday needs, sleep. During the course of a fifteen day experiment, the subject will measure his daily sleeping habits. For the first five days the subject will continue his regular daily sleeping habits, without any change. The next ten days the subject will go to sleep two hours earlier, and will have reinforcers to reward him for this more healthy sleeping habit. The final five days of the experiment with have the subject continue going to sleep two hours earlier, but without the reinforcers, the end result of the experiment will be to find out if the subject will continue his new sleeping habits without the use of reinforcers. Sleep is the natural state of partial or total unconsciousness. During sleep, physiological demands are reduced and blood pressure drops. Breathing during sleep is slowed and more regular than when awake. Sleep also results in a decreased response to external stimuli. Without adequate enough sleep, the part of the brain that controls language, memory, and sense of time are severely affected. (Characteristics of Sleep 1)(Scientists Finding 1) According to a “Sleep in America Study” experts discovered that 63% of American adults do not get the recommended eight hours of sleep needed for good health, and 31% get less than seven hours of sleep. (Sleep Facts 1) Teenagers on a school night will have on average 6.5 hours of sleep, 2.5 hours less than the nine hours generally needed for teens. The lack of sleep in teens play a large role in a student’s schooling. Mood swings, irritability, lack of self confidence are all common in today’s teens, but the lack of sufficient sleep makes these problems much worse than they should be. (Adolescent Sleep 1) The subject taking part in the experiment is an eighteen year old male, Wallace State
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