Research

Mixed

Subjective alertness (measured by Stanford Sleepiness Scale) recovers much more slowly than objective psychomotor vigilance, with a time constant of 9.09 hours, making it appear nearly linear over typical sleep durations.

Do not rely on how sleepy you feel to judge your cognitive readiness. Subjective alertness recovers much slower (approx 9 hours to fully asymptote) than your actual ability to react and stay vigilant (approx 2 hours). You may feel subjectively 'fine' after a short nap, but your objective performance may still be recovering. For safety-critical tasks, prioritize objective rest over subjective feeling.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
The DRC to the SSS improved much more slowly than psychomotor vigilance, so that it could be fit equally well by a linear function (slope = -0.26) or a saturating exponential function (T=9.09 hours).
Megan E. Jewett et al. · SLEEP · 1999

Why this rating

Same study design as N1, robust cross-study comparison.

Source

Dose-response Relationship Between Sleep Duration and Human Psychomotor Vigilance and Subjective Alertness

Megan E. Jewett et al. · SLEEP · 1999

DOI 10.1093/sleep/22.2.171

cross_sectional · n=61Cited 352×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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