A study using the mobile video game Sea Hero Quest found that men, but not women, who reported shorter sleep durations tended to perform worse on wayfinding tasks in the game. The association disappeared when men who reported sleeping fewer than 6 or more than 9 hours per night were excluded from the analysis. The findings were published in Scientific Reports.
Sleep quality refers to how well a person sleeps. It encompasses aspects such as how long it takes to fall asleep, the amount of time spent in different sleep stages, the number of awakenings during a night, and how rested a person feels upon waking. Good sleep quality is crucial for maintaining physical health, mental health, and overall quality of life.
Sleep plays a vital role in repairing the body, strengthening the immune system, and regulating hormones that control appetite and growth. Sleep also helps to consolidate memories, process information, and maintain cognitive functions such as attention, learning, and problem-solving. Because of all this, poor sleep quality is linked to a variety of health issues, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and depression. People lacking sleep often show lower emotional stability, worse productivity, and worse ability to interact socially.
Study author Emre Yavuz and his colleagues noted that previous research had linked poor sleep quality to worse spatial navigation performance. They hypothesized that their study would find a similar association between sleep quality and spatial navigation performance. They also considered the possibility that the relationship between sleep duration and spatial navigation performance might follow an inverted U-shaped curve, suggesting that both very long and very short sleep durations could impair spatial navigation compared to a medium or normal sleep duration.
The study involved 766 adults living in the U.S., recruited through Prolific. Of these participants, 431 were women, and their average age was 27 years. Among them, 263 reported living in cities, while 503 lived outside of cities.
Participants responded to a series of self-report questions about their sleep habits and sleep quality. They also provided demographic data and information on the number of hours per week they spent playing video games. After completing the questionnaire, participants engaged in playing Sea Hero Quest.
Sea Hero Quest is a video game for mobile and tablet devices that requires participants to navigate through a three-dimensional world in a boat to search for sea creatures in order to photograph them. The environment consists of oceans, rivers and lakes. Study authors used it to assess participants’ wayfinding performance.
Results showed that females tended to sleep some minutes longer than males on average. Their average nap duration was 12 minutes longer. Women reported waking up a bit more often during the night than males and spending more time in bed. Females reported using alarms more often than males.
Individuals with less difficulty waking up, who felt less sleepy and with better sleep quality tended to perform better on wayfinding in the game. Males who reported shorted sleep durations tended to have worse wayfinding performance in the game. This was not the case with females. When men who reported sleeping for less than 6 or more than 9 hours per night were removed from the analysis, this association disappeared.
“Overall, our findings suggest that the effects of sleep duration on navigation ability may differ by gender. Accordingly, this research will serve as a platform for future research looking into how actively changing one’s sleep habits may improve their navigation ability and provide a greater understanding as to why individual differences in navigation ability may exist,” the study authors conclude.
The paper, “Shorter self‑reported sleep duration is associated with worse virtual spatial navigation performance in men,” was authored by Emre Yavuz, Christofer J. Gahnstrom, Sarah Goodroe, Antoine Coutrot, Michael Hornberger, Alpar S. Lazar, and Hugo J. Spiers.