%0 Journal Article
%T The Eight Hour Sleep Challenge During Final Exams Week
%A Michael K. Scullin
%J Teaching of Psychology
%@ 1532-8023
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0098628318816142
%X Many students and educators know that sleep is important to learning, yet there exists a gap between their knowledge and behavior. For example, fewer than 10% of students sleep 8 hr before final exams. In the context of two undergraduate courses on sleep (N = 34), students could earn extra credit if they averaged ¡Ý8.0 hr of sleep during final exams week. Sleep/wake patterns were monitored objectively using actigraphy. The 24 students who opted in to the challenge averaged 8.5 hr of sleep (n = 17 succeeded). Short sleep (¡Ü6.9 hr) occurred on only 11% of nights, significantly less than early-semester baseline (51%) and comparison group (65%) data. On the final exam, students who slept ¡Ý8.0 hr performed better than students who opted out or slept ¡Ü7.9 hr, even after controlling for prefinal grades. The 8-hr sleep challenge provides proof of principle that many students can maintain optimal sleep while studying, without sacrificing test performance
%K sleep education
%K final examinations
%K examination stress
%K incentive
%K motivation
%K actigraphy
%K intention¨Cbehavior gap
%K behavior change
%K implementation gap
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0098628318816142