Lack Of Sleep Ages BodyS Systems Essays - Dream, Sleep, Parasomnias

Lack Of Sleep Ages Body'S Systems Reaction Paper 1 (Sample Reaction Paper) Ron Gerrard, HWS Psychology Department My paper is based on an article from the texts web site (chapter 9) entitled Lack of sleep ages bodys systems. The basic claim of the article is that sleep deprivation has various harmful effects on the body. The reported effects include decreased ability to metabolize glucose (similar to what occurs in diabetes) and increased levels of cortisol (a stress hormone involved in memory and regulation of blood sugar levels). The article also briefly alludes (in the quote at the bottom of page 1) to unspecified changes in brain and immune functioning with sleep deprivation. Intuitively, these results make a lot of sense to me. I know that when Im sleep deprived for any significant amount of time, I begin to feel physically miserable. I also seem to be more vulnerable to colds and other physical ailments. In thinking about it though, most of the times Im sleep deprived are also periods of psychological stress (such as finals week). To the extent that there are changes in my physical well-being, Im wondering whether they are due to the sleep deprivation, the stress itself, or some combination of the two. In principle, a careful experiment should be able to isolate the effects of sleep deprivation by depriving people of sleep in the absence of stress and other such confounding variables. That seems to be what this experiment does, but as I read the article closely, I found myself unsure that the effects it reports are necessarily due to sleep deprivation per se. I realize that a brief summary article like this does not provide all the details of the experimental methodology, but a couple of things that were reported in the article struck me as curious. The researchers studied physical functioning (cortisol levels, etc.) in men who had a normal nights sleep (eight hours in bed) the first three nights of the study, followed by a period of sleep deprivation (four hours in bed) the next six nights of the study, and finally a period of sleep recovery (12 hours in bed) the last seven nights of the study. In reporting the effects on the body (the discussion of glucose metabolism, in the fifth paragraph of the article) the authors compare the sleep deprivation stage only to the sleep recovery stage, not to normal sleep. This seems to me like doing an experiment on drunkenness and comparing the drunk stage to the hangover stage, without ever reporting what happens when the person is sober. Since normal sleep would seem to be the appropriate control c ondition here, the absence of results from that condition makes me wonder if something unusual was found there and not reported in the article. Another potential problem comes from the sequential nature of the different sleep conditions. All participants had normal sleep, then sleep deprivation, then sleep recovery (in that order). Therefore, the three conditions differ not only in the amount of sleep, but also in the level of familiarity with the experimental procedures. Why should that make a difference? Well, consider the results reported for the stress hormone cortisol. In comparing people who are sleep deprived (days 4-9 of the study) with those who are in sleep recovery (days 10-16 of the study), they are comparing people early in the experiment to those later in the experiment. If the experimental procedures are themselves stressful (e.g. drawing a blood sample) then a person who has been through it more often might find it less stressful, and therefore not respond so strongly. This fact, rather than the amount of sleep itself, might explain the pattern of results in the physiological data. Im not sure whether the methodological issues Ive raised really do account for all the studys results, but they should be corrected in future research on sleep deprivation. The easiest way to do this, it seems to me, would be to simply compare two different groups of participants, randomly assigned to either a normal sleep condition or a sleep deprivation condition. Each participant would be in his/her respective condition throughout the experiment, so there would not be any difference in general experimental familiarity that could account for

Responses to Reading Sample Essay for ESL Adult Students

Responses to Reading Sample Essay for ESL Adult StudentsCan you respond to reading sample essay for ESL adult students? What should your response be? Is the level of expectation too high or too low? This essay sample is meant to give you ideas on how to improve the quality of your writing and what the job market demands.When you speak with a typical ESL student, he or she is probably too busy worrying about the need to move up the career ladder. They don't have the time to sit down and write out an essay. They have the ability to write in short bursts, but they don't have the time to devote to their work. They're going to use this essay sample to see if you can respond to it and provide them with the tools to make the most of their skills in this area.The first thing you want to do when you respond to the reading sample essay for ESL adult students is to make sure you write about what they need to know. Instead of getting caught up in what they need to know, you will be writing about what you know. It's okay to add information about yourself as well, but make sure that the information you are giving them is important. You need to make them feel as though they matter. Not only do they care about your opinion of them, but they care about your opinion of them.The next thing you want to do is to provide a response. Try to think of what you would say if you were working with this student. Think about how you would talk to them. Of course, you may not be able to come up with something as eloquent as the individual who writes the essay, but this is a great way to start thinking of your responses. It's the same exact thing you would be thinking about when you're talking to a student at school, except you're talking to someone who has mastered the English language and knows that the goal is to communicate with you instead of frustrating you.The last thing you want to do is to work with the response that you provide. Do this by creating a paragraph that demonstrates how you can help them with their jobs. Take your time with this paragraph. Instead of writing about what they do and why you think they should do it, think about what your profession could be doing for them. Ask questions, give suggestions, provide skills that you have gained, and whatever else you can think of that shows that you care.Once you've responded to the reading sample, your next step is to rewrite it and look for another response. Write another response and this time try to provide more information. The good thing about writing responses is that you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be honest. Tell the student exactly what you have learned about the situation.When you receive another response, you'll be able to put the pieces together and determine if this student needs to be proactive or passive. If the student was passive and didn't engage you, then the student has a long way to go before he or she is ready to have conversations with you. Don't write these response s, unless the student is ready for more information. The more the student gets from you, the better.After you have written a response, you want to read it and edit it so that you don't miss any specific points. For example, you want to make sure that you keep the essay around the same length, but you also need to make sure that it is correct. Finally, make sure you reread the response and make corrections if needed.