Signal uncertainty and sleep loss.

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Abstract
During a 3-5 day base-line period, 2 days of sleep loss, and 3 days of recovery, 52 Ss performed 3 visual vigilance tasks, of 10 min. each ranging in signal uncertainty from complete redundancy to .84 bit/sec. The major effect of uncertainty was to cause errors of omission which increased with sleep loss. The interaction between signal uncertainty and sleep loss was significant. Task duration (of 10 min.) caused no impairment during the base-line and recovery phases, but during sleep loss, errors of omission rose sharply on the last 3 min. of each task. There was no significant interaction between signal uncertainty and task duration. Decrement was considerably greater for Ss working alone than for Ss working in a group. Oral temperature had no consistent relation to errors of omission or to sleep loss.

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