ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the effect of sleep deprivation (SD) on cognitive evaluation of affective picture. Methods Korty-three undergraduates were recruited and assigned to sleep deprivation group (n 23) and sleep control group (n=20). Because two students in the sleep control group did not participate in retest task and one student data of the test were bst. 17 people was eventually included in the sleep control group. The students in the sleep deprivation group received sleep deprivation at the end of the test (from 22:00 to next day 8:00). The sleep control group had no intervention. A total of 206 affective pictures (108 test and 108 retest) were selected from International Affective Picture System (1APS) and categorized as positive, neutral and negative pictures. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale ( PANAS) was used to investigate the subjective mood ratings of participants at test and retest in two groups and to evaluate the effect of SD on cognitive evaluation of affective pictures. Results SD showed no significant effect on the evaluation of positive and negative pictures, but it showed a negative bias in valence ratings for neutral pictures, with significant difference found for neutral pictures between test and retest in sleep deprivation group (P<0. 01). but not in the sleep control group (P= 0.12). After controlling covariance subjective emotion, the negative bias caused by SD still existed for the neutral pictures. The arousal ratings for affective pictures in sleep deprivation group was significantly higher than that in sleep control group (P<0.05). Conclusion Our results indicate that sleep is important in emotional evaluation, and SD can lead to a negative bias for neutral stimuli.