The effects of lunch time napping on habitual nappers’ mental work efficiency in the afternoon and early evening: an empirical study from China

摘要

30 college students who have the habit of lunch time napping (LTN) participated in experiments under two different conditions: Having lunch time napping and not having lunch time napping. They were asked to complete three tasks in-cluding vigilance reaction, short-term memory, addition arithmetic;their performance was re-corded automatically by computer during 3 dif-ferent periods in the afternoon and early eve-ning. The analysis about the experimental data showed that: as for habitual nappers, midafter-noon nap zone existed, LTN played a very im-portant role in overcoming it, and did great help in enhancing their vigilance in the afternoon and early evening, however, LTN didn’t bring sig-nificant positive effect to executing complex tasks (such as short-term memory and addition task) at the periods of time 16:30-17:30, 20:00- 21:00. Finally, this article discussed the conclu-sions and its significance.