4 ms·

>If you had folks working(and acclimated to) the graveyard shift I would expect similar results on memory recall but in the morning hours. Only anecdotal, but

>If you had folks working(and acclimated to) the graveyard shift I would expect similar results on memory recall but in the morning hours. Only anecdotal, but I had a friend that worked graveyard shift for a few months and when she could get proper sleep during the day it was pretty much like that. She'd be awake and energetic around 10 or 11 pm, worked through her shift, would go through that same early 'morning' productive push and that after 'lunch' slump and by morning she'd be tired and kind of hazy before she went to sleep. It just ended up being she'd never get proper sleep during the day to the point she was tired and hazy all the time and couldn't take it any more and had to quit. During the beginning though, her memory for things was definitely better at night when she first got up. She'd forget things from conversations we'd have in thr morning or sometimes she wouldn't remember them at all and her memory is usually pretty good, sometimes better than mine, with things or wouldn't really be that coherent about what was going on.

Bartweiss 7y ago
Generally, people working night shifts in "normal" settings have worse health and cognitive outcomes than people on equivalent day shifts. (Swing shifts are evil, and do far more damage than either.) There seem to be two main factors driving that. One is simply that we arrange the world for being awake in the day: night-shift workers get less sleep due to daytime tasks (e.g. going to the bank), and worse sleep because isolating from light and noise is much harder during the day. The other is a bit more subtle: even with a bright office and blackout curtains, nightshift workers get hammered with conflicting time/light signals every time they commute home or go near a window. It's like a vastly worse version of checking staring into a computer screen right before bed. There are other impacts, too - I've heard of nightshift workers getting something like SAD, and Vitamin D deficiencies are probably common. But all of that applies to people in wholly-artificial light cycles (e.g. submarines or the Arctic), and yet those people seem to cope far better than 'regular' nightshift workers.

Bartweiss 7y ago

Generally, people working night shifts in "normal" settings have worse health and cognitive outcomes than people on equivalent day shifts. (Swing shifts are evil, and do far more damage than either.) There seem to be two main factors driving that. One is simply that we arrange the world for being awake in the day: night-shift workers get less sleep due to daytime tasks (e.g. going to the bank), and worse sleep because isolating from light and noise is much harder during the day. The other is a bit more subtle: even with a bright office and blackout curtains, nightshift workers get hammered with conflicting time/light signals every time they commute home or go near a window. It's like a vastly worse version of checking staring into a computer screen right before bed. There are other impacts, too - I've heard of nightshift workers getting something like SAD, and Vitamin D deficiencies are probably common. But all of that applies to people in wholly-artificial light cycles (e.g. submarines or the Arctic), and yet those people seem to cope far better than 'regular' nightshift workers.