Insufficient Sleep and Behavioral Health in the Military: A 5-Country Perspective.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The goal of this paper was to highlight the degree to which sleep, behavioral health, and leader involvement were interrelated using data from militaries in five English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the United States. RECENT FINDINGS: Many service members reported sleeping fewer than the recommended 7 h/night: 34.9%, 67.2%, and 77.2% of respondents from New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, respectively. Countries reporting shorter sleep duration also reported fewer insomnia-related difficulties, likely reflecting higher sleep pressure from chronic sleep loss. Across all countries, sleep problems were positively correlated with behavioral health symptoms. Importantly, leader promotion of healthy sleep was positively correlated with more sleep and negatively correlated with sleep problems and behavioral health symptoms. Insufficient sleep in the military is ubiquitous, with serious implications for the behavioral health and functioning of service members. Leaders should attend to these risks and examine ways to promote healthy sleep in service members.

Fixated in unfamiliar territory: Mapping estimates across typical and atypical number lines.

Adults (N = 72) estimated the location of target numbers on number lines that varied in numerical range (i.e., typical range 0-10,000 or atypical range 0-7,000) and spatial orientation (i.e., the 0 endpoint on the left [traditional] or on the right [reversed]). Eye-tracking data were used to assess strategy use. Participants made meaningful first fixations on the line, with fixations occurring around the origin for low target numbers and around the midpoint and endpoint for high target numbers. On traditional direction number lines, participants used left-to-right scanning and showed a leftward bias; these effects were reduced for the reverse direction number lines. Participants made fixations around the midpoint for both ranges but were less accurate when estimating target numbers around the midpoint on the 7,000-range number line. Thus, participants are using the internal benchmark (i.e., midpoint) to guide estimates on atypical range number lines, but they have difficulty calculating the midpoint, leading to less accurate estimates. In summary, both range and direction influenced strategy use and accuracy, suggesting that both numerical and spatial processes influence number line estimation.

Selection of procedures in mental subtraction: Use of eye movements as a window on arithmetic processing.

Adults who use mental procedures other than direct retrieval to solve simple arithmetic problems typically make more errors and respond more slowly than individuals who rely on retrieval. The present study examined how this extra time was distributed across problem components when adults (n = 40) solved small (e.g., 5 - 2) and large (e.g., 17 - 9) subtraction problems. Two performance groups (i.e., retrievers and procedure users) were created based on a 2-group cluster analysis using statistics derived from the ex-Gaussian model of reaction time (RT) distributions (i.e., µ and τ) for both small and large problems. Cluster results differentiated individuals based on the frequency with which they used retrieval versus procedural strategies, supporting the view that differences in mu and tau reflected differences in choice of strategies used. Patterns of eye movements over time were also dramatically different across clusters, and provide strong support for the view that individuals were using different mental procedures to solve these problems. We conclude that eye-movement patterns can be used to distinguish fluent individuals who readily use retrieval from those who rely more on procedural strategies, even if traditional self-report methods are unavailable. (PsycINFO Database Record