Week 2 Nap Lab: Napping on the clock

The first nap of the course — you nap under observation, measure yourself before and after, and find out whether the dead zone is real on you

1 March 2027

The lecture made a claim about nap length. This lab is where you find out whether it is true of you, which is not the same question and is the one you will be graded on later.

Before the lab#

• Something to lie on or lean against, and something over your eyes. The room is dimmed but it is not dark.
• Do not skip the night before to make napping easier. It contaminates your first data point, and you only get one first data point.
• If caffeine is part of your ordinary day, keep it ordinary. Week 3 is when we touch that variable on purpose.

In the lab#

Baseline, ten minutes. Two measures, both of which you will repeat for two weeks in the Nap Log:

1. Sleepiness, self-reported. The Karolinska scale: a single number from 1 (“extremely alert”) to 9 (“very sleepy, fighting sleep”). It is one question and it holds up surprisingly well.
2. Reaction time. Ten trials of a simple response task. Take the median, not the mean — one distracted trial should not be allowed to speak for the set.

The nap, 20 minutes. Timed from lights-down, not from when you think you fell asleep. Most of you will not be sure whether you slept. Record that uncertainty rather than resolving it: “unsure” is a real observation, and week 10 is about how badly the devices that claim to resolve it actually do.

Wake, and measure immediately. This is the part people get wrong. The measurement that matters is taken in the first two minutes, while inertia — if there is any — is still present. Then repeat both measures at fifteen minutes.

Discussion, twenty minutes. We pool the numbers on the board with no names attached and look at the shape. Expect disagreement with the lecture: in a room this size somebody always wakes up worse, and that person is more interesting than the ones who confirm the reading.

Afterwards#

Your three timepoints — baseline, on waking, fifteen minutes later — are entry one of the Nap Log. The two-week recording period starts tonight, so the format you leave here with is the format you keep.

Bring the objection you were asked to prepare, whether or not the numbers supported it. A result that contradicted you is worth a paragraph in your analysis; a result you quietly dropped is worth nothing.