Introduction: During sleep deprivation, sustained attention is impacted by homeostatic pressure to sleep and the number of tasks. Objective: to compare the effects of 36h of sleep deprivation on psychomotor performance during a Single-Task Condition (STC) vs Dual-Task Condition (DTC) in university students. Method: During 36 hours of sleep deprivation, the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) was applied to 13 male university students, in the STC and DTC situations, sitting in a chair or standing on a force platform, every 3 hours, totaling 13 evaluations, from 08am on day 1 to 08pm on day 2. Results: There was an effect of time on the STC and DTC in all 13 evaluation moments, in all variables analyzed, except Mean RT and Slowest 10% RT, for a p-value of 0.05. No significant difference was found in the PVT variables in the comparison between the two conditions, despite a trend to significance, in the moments of homeostatic pressure to sleep in the task (05am and 02pm on day 2). Conclusion: Sleep deprivation negatively affected the psychomotor performance of participants in both conditions, demonstrating worsening of sustained attention, greater engagement of standing posture and revealing greater relaxation of sitting posture.
Brant et al. (Tue,) studied this question.