Cognitive processes in planning and judgements under sleep deprivation and time pressure

Cadets' planning and judgements were experimentally examined in four simulated rescue operations during military ranger training. We examined the effects of sleep deprivation (SD), affect, time pressure, and need for cognition (NFC) on cadets' planning of a rescue operation, and their self-judgements of security, probability of success, and quality of their plans. Rescue experts judged the cadets' plans with respect to the same three dimensions. In addition, time on task and number of procedural errors were recorded. The results suggest that NFC is related to better performance among sleep-deprived individuals, that procedural knowledge is fairly resilient to SD and time pressure, and that self-judgements seem more fine-graded than expert judgements.