Sleep: Cognitive Processes and Czeisler
Explain sleep as information processing, Reorganisational theory of dreaming and Czeisler et al.’s bright-light intervention.
How to study Higher Psychology
Build each answer from accurate psychological knowledge, named evidence, application to behaviour, analysis and justified evaluation.
Core concepts
Concept 1
sleep and information processing
Exam cue: Explain how sleep may consolidate or reorganise information.
Concept 2
Crick and Mitchison’s Reorganisational theory
Exam cue: Separate a theory of dreaming from a general benefit of sleep.
Concept 3
Czeisler et al.’s 1990 aims and method
Exam cue: Relate timed light exposure to circadian adaptation in night work.
Concept 4
Czeisler et al.’s results and conclusions
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Saying sleep records every experience unchanged.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Confusing Czeisler’s light manipulation with drug treatment.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Using the existence of a study as evaluation without discussing its quality.
Guardrail: Avoid deterministic claims, unsupported causation and generic evaluation disconnected from the named evidence.
Memory anchors
Information processing
Sleep may support consolidation, organisation and integration of information.
Reorganisational theory
Dreaming reflects the brain removing or reorganising unnecessary patterns of neural connection.
Czeisler aim
To examine whether controlled bright light and darkness could improve adaptation to night work.
Czeisler manipulation
Participants’ exposure to bright light and darkness was timed to shift circadian rhythms.
Czeisler inference
Light can act as a powerful cue for altering physiological adaptation to work schedules.
Application
Time light exposure to the desired sleep–wake shift rather than treating all light as equivalent.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
Which claim best represents sleep as information processing?
A student learns vocabulary and sleeps before testing. Better recall than after equivalent wake time would support what?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
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