Evaluation

Cards (4)

  • Shift work
    • Provides understanding of what happens when circadian rhythms are disrupted - desynchonisation
    • Night workers in shift work experience reduced concentration at around 6am (circadian troughs) - mistakes and accidents are more likely (Boivin et al)
    • Shift workers 3x more likely to develop heart disease (Knutsson)
    • Therefore, research into circadian rhythms has real-world economic value
  • Counterpoint to shift work
    • Research into shift work uses correlational methods - difficult to establish whether desynchronisation is the cause of the negative effects - may be other factors
    • Solomon - high divorce rates may be due to sleep strain and other influences like missing family events
    • Therefore, may not be biological factors causing negative effects in shift workers
  • Medical treatment
    • Circadian rhythms coordinate basic processes like digestion and heart rate
    • They rise and fall during the day, leading to chronotherapeutics - using biological rhythms to help administer medication
    • E.g. Aspirin is most effective taken last thing at night - prevents heart attacks (Bonten et al)
    • Therefore, circadian rhythms can help increase effectiveness of drug treatment
  • Individual differences
    • Difficult to generalise
    • Aschoff and Wever, and Siffre's studies based on small samples
    • Sleep/wake cycles vary from person to person (Czeisler et al)
    • Vary from 13 to 65 hours
    • Duffy et al. - some people have a natural preference for going to bed and waking earlier ('larks') and vice versa ('owls')
    • Siffre - his own sleep/wake cycle had slowed over time
    • Therefore, it is difficult to use data for anything except averages, which may be meaningless