Female and Male Aviators are not Affected Differently by Sleep Deprivation andContinuous Task Demands

摘要

Recent changes in U.S. military regulations have brought about the assignment offemale aviators to combat roles. This has been the topic of serious debate, but there are few facts concerning differences between males' and females' abilities to withstand combat-relevant stressors. This study was conducted to determine whether there are gender differences in responses to a common operational stressor, sleep deprivation. Six male and six female UH-60 helicopter pilots were exposed to a 40-hour period of continuous wakefulness and tested on flight performance and mood. The flight performance results indicated that gender produced virtually no operationally significant differences in the effects of sleep loss. Furthermore, although mood evaluations showed that women felt less tense and more energetic overall than their male counterparts, there were no interactions between sleep deprivation and gender. Thus, male and female aviators appear equally capable of performing flight-related tasks despite moderate sleep loss.