Page No 471-480
Rupa Bhatt
Military Hospital, Dehradun
Rohit Chauhan
Panjab University, Chandigarh
The two factors, sleep and stress, are some of the most impactful and yet neglected
aspects which define the young adult mindset in thinking, learning, and performing in
real life. The current research investigated the impacts of the quality of sleep and levels
of stress on cognitive performance of the young adults. A sample of 80 participants
aged 18–30 years completed standardized measures of sleep quality, perceived stress,
and cognitive performance. Two-way ANOVA indicated a significant main effect of the
quality of sleep, p <.01, poor sleepers reported more cognitive failures than good
sleepers. There was also no significant stress level, p>.05 and sleep-stress interaction
was non-significant, p>.05. Correlation tests found that sleep quality had significant
associations with cognitive performance (r = .494, p<.001), stress level had significant
associations with cognitive performance (r =.368, p<.01) and sleep quality had significant
associations with stress level (r =.277, p<.05). Multiple regression revealed that sleep
quality and stress covariated the cognitive performance significantly, p<.001, and
explained the variance of 30.2% (R2 =.302). The sleep quality (â=.425, p<.001) and
stress level (â=.250, p<.05) also were significant predictors. These results point out
sleep quality as a strong predictor of cognitive functioning, with the implication that the
role of stress plays a smaller but significant role at the predictive level. The implications
on academic well-being, sleeping hygiene and stress management are addressed