「失眠」容易導致「臉盲」

Poor Sleepers Worse at Recognizing Unfamiliar Faces

「失眠」容易導致「臉盲」

Subjects suffering insomnia got more wrong answers in a face-matching task-but they were paradoxically more confident of their responses. Christopher Intagliata reports.

在一項面部匹配的試驗中，飽受失眠困擾的觀察對象做出了更多錯誤的選擇，奇怪的是這些失眠患者卻對自己的錯誤答案頗有自信。克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔報道。

撰文/播音：克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔(Christopher Intagliata)

翻譯:郭鑫鵬

審校:索紅日

Standing in line at passport control isn』t the most relaxing experience. The officer looks at your passport…at you…back at your passport…back at you. Kind of nerve wracking. But put yourself in their shoes. They』re trying to figure out if your face is actually the same one as that little thumbnail image on the page. Not the easiest task.

站在入境護照檢查窗口並不是一個非常輕鬆的體驗。邊檢官員看看你的護照，又看看你，再看看護照，又看向你。相當傷腦筋。但是把你放在他們的位置你就會知道，他們正在努力地確認你的臉是否和證件上拇指大小的照片相一致。這並不是簡單的工作。

「People are often surprised at how poor they are. 」David White, a cognitive psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He』s even tested Australian passport agents at the task. 「Their performance was no better than a group of untrained university students.」

「人們常常對他們差勁的表現而感到驚訝。」澳大利亞新南威爾士大學認知心理學家大衛·懷特說道。他曾在實驗中測試了澳大利亞護照邊檢人員，「他們的表現並不比一群未受過訓練的大學生要好。」

In his latest study, White and his colleagues investigated how poor sleep—less than six and a half hours a night—might affect facial recognition. Turn out, bad sleep did lead to more wrong answers on a face-matching task. And study subjects suffering from insomnia, meaning poor sleep plus other symptoms like anxiety, scored badly, too, compared to well-rested subjects.

在他最近的研究中，懷特和他的同事們調查了夜晚低於6個小時半的睡眠會對臉部認知產生怎樣的影響。結果表明，壞的睡眠質量使得人們在面部匹配實驗中的表現更差。相比於睡眠充足的實驗對象，那些受失眠困擾甚至因此導致焦慮癥狀的實驗對象也有著更差的表現。

But here』s the twist: 」When they made errors, people in this insomnia group, they actually had higher levels of confidence.」 They were more sure of their wrong answers. The results are in Royal Society Open Science. [Louise Beattie et al, Perceptual impairment in face identification with poor sleep]

而更令人感到意外的是，「當他們做出錯誤的選擇時，處於失眠症一組的人們對自己的答案有更大的自信。」他們更加肯定自己得出的錯誤的答案。研究結果發表於《皇家學會開放科學》期刊上[Louise Beattie et al, Perceptual impairment in face identification with poor sleep]。

To avoid these kinds of errors, White suggests security organizations pay more attention to which employees may be sleeping poorly. 「That』s more a sort of everyday occurrence, certainly for new parents or people that may have their sleep disrupted by shift work, which is very common in these security and forensic settings. 「And that they screen staffers for signs of insomnia, and consider assigning those officers to different jobs, that don』t involve scrutinizing faces all day. Precautions that may help the rest of us sleep a little easier, too.

為了避免產生這樣的錯誤，懷特建議各單位的安全部門對睡眠質量差的職工給予更多的關注。「對於那些剛有孩子的父母或者一些可能因為輪班工作而影響睡眠的人們是家常便飯，並且在一些安全和法醫環境下很常見。」他們應該篩查出那些有失眠症跡象的職員，並派給他們一些不用整天仔細觀察面部的工作。這些預防措施也可以幫助其他人更好地睡眠。

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