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A List
12/3/07
SLU Prof's Study Shows All-Nighters Equal Lower Grades
CANTON - With end-of-semester finals looming, here's an exam question: Will pulling
an all-nighter actually help you score well?
To the dismay of college students everywhere, the correct answer is "no."
Pamela Thacher, associate professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University,
studied the sleeping patterns and transcripts of 111 students to see the
correlation between sleep and their grade-point averages.
"You can't do your best work when you're sleep-deprived," Thacher says of her
findings, which were that two-thirds of the students reported that they had
pulled at least one all-nighter during a semester and that those who did it
regularly had lower GPAs. Thacher presented the results of her study
during the summer at the annual conference of the National Sleep Society,
and it is scheduled for publication in the January issue of the journal
Behavioral Sleep Medicine.
The study also examined whether most students who pulled all-nighters did so
due to procrastination. According to Thacher, that wasn't the case for most
students. "The data indicate that procrastination is not associated with
all-nighters, although both practices significantly correlated with lower
GPAs," she says.
A small proportion of those in the study indicated that they use all-nighters
regularly and maintain high GPAs, but Thacher notes that the findings show
that won't be the case for most students.
Many students believe that it's a "rite of passage" to stay up all night during
college and that "it's kind of fun," Thacher says. But, she adds, "Pulling
all-nighters compromises your sleep overall " and makes it difficult to reach
full academic potential. Short-term side effects of sleep deprivation include
delayed reactions and tendencies to make mistakes.
In general, Thacher says, college students' sleep is inadequate, irregular and
of poor quality, and all result in worsened academic performance. Over-use and
availability of caffeinated beverages, the presence on campuses of all-night
study areas and poor time management all contribute to students' sleep
deprivation, she adds.
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More: A Profile of Pamela Thacher
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