A test of the somnolent mentation theory and the cognitive shuffle insomnia treatment

Insomnia affects about 33% of Americans according to Harvey & Tang (2003) who called for new cognitive treatments. We will report preliminary results from a test of (a) the Somnolent Mentation theory (SMT) of sleep onset (SO) and (b) a new cognitive treatment for insomnia, the cognitive shuffle (CS), derived from the SMT (Beaudoin, 2013, 2014). According to SMT, incoherent mentation characteristic of SO is not merely a side-effect of the SO period but promotes it, meaning it is somnolent. The SMT identifies several types of insomnolent mentation, which involve sense making (e.g., problem solving). SMT postulates counter-insomnolent mentation, thought patterns that interfere with insomnolent mentation. The CS is predicted to be both somnolent and counter-insomnolent (super-somnolent). Participants either engage in constructive worry Carney & Waters (2006) or in the CS using SomnoTest an iOS app developed by CogSci Apps Corp. (led by Beaudoin) based on mySleepButton®. References (for abstract and poster) Beaudoin, L. P. (2013). The possibility of super-somnolent mentation: A new information-processing approach to sleep-onset acceleration and insomnia exemplified by serial diverse imagining. Cognitive Productivity Research Project, Simon Fraser University. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12143 Beaudoin, L. P. (2014a, July). A design-based approach to sleep-onset and insomnia: super-somnolent mentation, the cognitive shuffle and serial diverse imagining. Paper presented at the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society's workshop on "Computational Modeling of Cognition-Emotion Interactions: Relevance to Mechanisms of Affective Disorders and Therapeutic Action", Quebec, Canada. 15-08-01, 5:50 PM 2 of 2 Beaudoin, L. P. & Digdon, N. (2015) Towards an affective information-processing theory of sleep-onset and insomnia. Manuscript in preparation. Brown, R. E., Basheer, R., McKenna, J. T., Strecker, R. E., & McCarley, R. W. (2012). Control of sleep and wakefulness. Physiological Reviews, 92(3), 1087–1187. Carney, C.E., & Waters, W.F. (2006). Effects of a structured problem-solving procedure on pre-sleep cognitive arousal in college students with insomnia. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 4, 13–28. Dennett, D. C. (1971). Intentional systems. The Journal of Philosophy, 68(4), 87-106. Digdon, N., & Koble, A. (2011). Effects of constructive worry, imagery distraction, and gratitude interventions on sleep quality: A pilot trial. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3(2), 193–206. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.17580854.2011.01049.x Harvey, A. G., Tang, N. K. Y., & Browning, L. (2005). Cognitive approaches to insomnia. Clinical Psychology Review, 25(5), 593–611. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2005.04.005 Krauchi, K., & DeBoer, T. (2011). Body temperature, sleep, and hibernation. In M. H. Kryger, T. Roth, & W. C. Dement, Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine (pp. 323–334). Elsevier: St. Louis. Saper, C. B., Fuller, P. M., Pedersen, N. P., Lu, J., & Scammell, T. E. (2010). Sleep state switching. Neuron, 68(6), 1023–1042. Sloman, A. (1993). Prospects for AI as the general science of intelligence. In A. Sloman, D. Hogg, G. Humphreys, D. Partridge, & A. Ramsay (Eds.). Prospects for Artificial Intelligence, (pp. 1–10). Amsterdam, Netherlands: IOS Press. Wuyts, J., De Valck, E., Vandekerckhove, M., Pattyn, N., Bulckaert, A., Berckmans, D., et al. (2012). The influence of pre-sleep cognitive arousal on sleep onset processes. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 83(1), 8–15. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.09.016