0101 Experimental Sleep Restriction, Anticipatory Stress, and Learning Organic Chemistry

Abstract

Introduction: Organic chemistry is an infamous course for many STEM and pre-health undergraduate students. Failure and dropout rates in organic chemistry range from 30-50%, with 75% of students who drop the pre-medical designation indicating struggling with organic chemistry as the primary reason. Some concerning research indicates that drop-out rates are disproportionately elevated in female students. There are currently no data on whether sleep impacts organic chemistry outcomes, but previous laboratory work suggests that mild sleep restriction can impair learning and increase stress reactivity. Methods: Participants included 100 college undergraduate students who had not previously taken organic chemistry. We developed an interactive lecture and exam to simulate a prototypical organic chemistry class. Prior to taking the lecture, we randomly assigned participants to either normal time in bed (8 hours) or restricted time in bed (6 hours). Sleep/wake state was monitored using wristband actigraphy, and experimenters were masked to participant conditions using sealed envelopes. When participants returned to take the lecture, we applied blood pressure and electrocardiography monitors, and asked them to estimate how well they would learn the material and perform on a later test (meta-cognition). Results: Prior to taking the lecture, female participants were significantly less confident in their ability to learn organic chemistry if they were sleep restricted (M=45.6%) than if they were well rested (M=55.9%), p.05, but very miscalibrated in the sleep restriction condition (M=66.9%), p.05. Additional analyses will include physiological measurements of stress reactivity (e.g., heart rate variability). Conclusion: Female students may experience heightened anticipatory stress, diminishing their confidence in being able to learn organic chemistry. In laboratory settings, such students can overcome a single night of mild sleep restriction, and low meta-cognitive predictions, to perform well on an organic chemistry test. However, in naturalistic settings, sleep-loss-induced stress and poor meta-cognitive awareness may increase risk for course drop-out.