IELTS Research Reports

An empirical investigation of the process of writing Academic Readingtest items for the International English Language Testing SystemThe link between short sleep and diabetes has also been exaggerated. It’s true that healthyyoung adults who are restricted to 4 hours’ sleep a night for several nights show thebeginnings of glucose intolerance, which can be a precursor to type 2 diabetes. However,that doesn’t mean it happens in the real world. For one thing, the effect quickly reversesafter one night of recovery sleep. Moreover, 4 hours’ sleep is highly artificial and the vastmajority of people cannot sustain it for more than a few days. Our very lowest naturallimit seems to be 5 hours, yet the researchers did not test the effect of 5 hours’ sleep onmetabolism, and many have just assumed that what is found with 4 hours’ sleep applies toshort sleep in general.D Not only have chronic sleep deprivation and its consequences been overstated, I alsobelieve that our apparent desire for more sleep isn’t all it seems. Do we really mean itwhen we say ‘yes’ to the question, ‘Would you like more sleep?’ It’s a leading questionthat invites a positive response, in the same way as asking whether you would like moremoney, a bigger house or more holiday. Who, in all honesty, would say no? The real testof inadequate sleep is whether people feel excessively sleepy during the daytime.E My team recently investigated sleep deprivation by giving around 11,000 adults aquestionnaire asking about it in an indirect way. We asked respondents the timeswhen they usually went to bed and woke up, and the amount of sleep they felt theyneeded each night. The responses to these two questions allowed us to get an estimateof the shortfall. They also completed another questionnaire to assess daytime sleepiness.Half the respondents turned out to have a sleep shortfall and around 20 per cent haddaytime sleepiness.We then asked, ‘If you had an extra hour a day, how would you prefer to spend it?’ Thealternatives were exercising, socialising, reading or relaxing, working or sleeping. Fewpeople opted to use their extra hour for sleep. It seems that people may want more sleep,but they may not actually need it, and they will happily forego extra sleep in favour ofother leisure activities.F Does any of this matter? I believe it does. Propagating the myth of a sleep-deprivedsociety adds to the anxieties of people who wrongly believe they are not getting enoughsleep, leading to a greater demand for sleeping pills. Rather than attempting to increaseour sleep, maybe we should spend those ‘extra’ hours of wakefulness doing somethingmore productive.New Scientist 18 October 2008IELTS Research Reports Volume 11369