Overview: Research suggests that sleep is essential for good health and is a predictor of a long life         (Mozzotti et al., 2014). Our physical and mental health as well as our general functioning is related to     both quantity and quality of sleep (Textbook, p. 188). The goal of this assignment is to examine different aspects of your sleep using the diary method.

For this assignment you are going to keep a sleep diary for three consecutive nights.

Part 1: Data Collection on Sleep, Point Form Chart + Sleep Analysis

1. Make a chart that includes boxes for each night of your study.

2. Note the time when you put your head on the pillow (or surface) to go to sleep. This is not pre-sleep  device time this is an approximate time you decide to go to sleep. If you try to get to sleep and you      cannot note how long you stayed awake‘trying.’Note anything you do during this‘attempt’to get to     sleep. For example, I note that time of 12:00am when I intend to sleep, but I lay awake for 30 minutes   thinking (do not note the contents), then bored, I look at my phone for another 20 minutes, and then I  try again to sleep (note the time) but I cannot sleep so I get up and eat something at X time and another 15 minutes later I try to sleep again (note the time, and, finally, I wake up 8 hours later (note total sleep hours and the time you wake up). Others of you will be head-to-pillow, 9 hours later and you are up.

3. Make sure your boxes for each night are large enough so you can record the time when you might  wake up during the night to use the bathroom or because you just pop awake. If you wear a             biofeedback watch you can use that to track your sleep, heart rate, and blood oxygen levels —consider including this information in your chart.

4. In your chart, note the time of day you wake up and whether you fell back to sleep.

5. In your chart, note any sleep disorders or problems that are ongoing (insomnia, apnea, sleepwalking, snoring, too light a sleep, medications that interfere with sleep).

6. In your chart, note any sleep aids you might use (e.g., white noise, noise cancelling earbuds, music, melatonin tablets).

7. In your chart, note any sleep disturbance, (e.g., loud neighbors, rain, people talking in your house) that may have either prevented you from sleeping or you need to get to sleep.

8. In your chart, note the time and duration of any naps taken during the day that might either increase or decrease your alertness right after the nap or throughout the rest of the day. Do naps interfere with

nighttime sleep?

9. Note whether a‘full night’s sleep (7-8 hours) feels like enough sleep. If you sleep more or less note how this amount of sleep makes you feel.

Part 2: Data Collection on Dreams, Dream Chart + Analysis

1. Make a SECOND chart, a dream chart for each night. For each night’s sleep and nap try to recall the basic content of your dream or dreams for each of the three nights (full or in-part). Note when YOU    ‘feel’the dream occurred (middle of the night, in the morning). A video by a prominent sleep research will be posted to help you analyze your dreams.

2. Note what kind of dream you may have had — nightmare, stupid, action, emotional, instructive —and the basic summary of your dream. I would advise you to write this down as soon as you wake up as     dreams fade quickly.

3. Have you have this dream before? Have you experienced the‘theme’(see above categories) before?

4. Note whether the dream affected your sense of self, mood, or you had reoccurring thoughts of the dream throughout the day.

4. If you nap, where your daytime dreams the same type as nighttime dreams (memorable, intense or emotional or as lucid (you are aware you are dreaming and you may have control over your dream)?

The Analyses: Full Sentences, 1.5 spacing, black font, citations required if you use information from the textbook. Citation = (Textbook, p. #), (Video). Word limit 1,200 (not including charts).

In this section, you will review your charts and write in more detail about your sleep experience. I am not going to tell you what to write as each person’s chart will be different, but you can summarize your  chart and then go into more detail about any issues that might relate to textbook or video content.

As well, what, if anything, did you learn about your habits, your sleep strategies, and even about the relationship between your sleep and stress?

** Some of your analysis is going to be based on your observations: dream content, sleep narratives and reflections on your experiences.

Where relevant, you will use and cite textbook or video content. How is your experience similar or      different from what research has to say? Does the research provide an explanation or insight into your sleep and dream experiences?

You can seamlessly include textbook content into your own observations and reasoning.

DO NOT QUOTE ANY CONTENT FROM THE TEXTBOOK — PARAPHRASE AND USE A CITATION.

Below are some analytic pathways (please do not ask me if you need to cover all of the points below —these are just ideas off the top of my head —discuss what you want and what is notable and          interesting to you about YOUR sleep and dream diary). Some of these discussion points below can be compared to what your textbook has to say about sleep and dreaming

Sleep Analysis

a) On which nights did you sleep less or more and did getting less sleep affect your performance (test, paying alertness, attention, mood).

b) Were naps refreshing or did they cause you to stay up longer than you should?

c). If you do not sleep alone, were you affected by your partner’s sleep? (moving around, snoring).    d) If your sleep diary shows you are getting minimal sleep —what are you doing? Can you try to break this habit and what can you do instead?