神戸大学 大学教育推進機構
大学教育推進機構 『大学教育研究』『大学教育研究』 第
第 27
27 号
号 20192019 年年 33 月：93-102
月：
神戸大学

An Action Study on the Cognitive Behavioral Training Effect on
Dozing during Classes１
授業中の居眠りへの認知行動訓練の効果に関する実践的研究
SUGIYAMA, Hikaru （5th grade student, Kobe University Secondary School）
MAIYA, Kiyoshi（Professor, Institute for Promotion of Higher Education, Kobe University）

FURUTANI, Maki

（Associate professor, Graduate School of Human Development andEnvironment, Kobe University）

MURANAKA, Yasuko （Project Associate professor, Support Center for Campus Life, Kobe
University）

Abstract
The purpose of this research was to examine whether the Cognitive Behavioral
Training method improved sleeping habits of high-school students to prevent dozing and to
facilitate concentration during classes. After the preliminary experiment (Study 1) with two
girls, six girls participated in the control group and three girls in the experimental group in
Study 2. In Study 1, the level of concentration during class was measured by
EOG/wink-meter. At the beginning of the second week, the experimental group was
introduced to sleep education, and for the following two or three weeks carried out the CBT
method. As a result, the average bedtime in the first week of the CBT method was earlier
than the baseline both in Study 1 and Study 2. Nevertheless, the control group in Study 2
did not show any positive change in bedtime between the first and the second baseline
week. Although reliable results were not obtained as to the concentration during classes, theresults did suggest the improvement in sleeping habits for some participants. Moreover, inthe post-experiment interview one participant answered that the frequency of dozing duringclasses decreased during the CBT method. In the discussion, technical problem whichshould be solved before doing the next study was pointed out.

１This study was conducted by Sugiyama under the direction of Maiya, Furutani and Muranaka in the
project of Global Science Campus (GSC). The GSC project is financially aided by Japan Science andTechnology Agency (http://www.jst.go.jp/cpse/gsc/about/index.html). The poster was presented at the2018 Summer Science Technology Education Math (STEM) Research Poster Session of University ofWashington on August 15, in Seattle, WA, USA. This paper is a revised version of Sugiyama’s poster
edited by Maiya. Furutani helped Sugiyama doing the sleep education and calcurated the sleep efficiency
by using the activity-based sleep monitor and the software. Muranaka advised Sugiyama and Maiya
about the CBT medthod.

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Many Japanese high-school students are suffering from sleepiness and dozing duringclasses that prevent them from concentrating, thus making learning more difficult. Bad
sleeping habits, especially a short or insufficient sleeping time, may cause the sleepinessand dozing, besides the poor quality of teaching and learning. According to an international
survey on sleep (OECD, 2009), the Japanese are the second shortest sleepers next to Korea
among 18 OECD countries. The average sleep time of the Japanese is shorter than 8 hours,
while it is longer than 8 hours in the other 16 countries. In Japan, this situation is especiallyserious among high-school students. Benesse’s recent survey (BERDI, 2009) indicates thathigh-school students sleep less than 7 hours and their bedtime is around midnight on
average. Fukuda (2007) argued that bad sleeping habits (short sleep time, late bedtime, thenaps in the evening and in the early morning) cause bad feelings such as stress, annoyance,and sleepiness, dozing and poor concentration during classes.
This being the situation, my research question is what can high-school students do inorder to prevent sleepiness and dozing during classes, and thus concentrate better? Sleep
education might be a key to solving this problem. Furutani and Miyazaki (2016) report thatsleep education improves the sleeping habits of elementary school pupils. Tanaka andTamura (2016) report that the sleep education with self-help treatment improves sleeping
habits and reduce bad feelings of junior high-school students. Nevertheless, such action
studies have not been carried out for high-school students.
Okajima and Inoue (2013) write that the Cognitive Behavioral Training (CBT) method
is effective not only in improving insomnia２, but also in improving sleeping habits. The
CBT method consisted of the sleep education including correcting the wrong
meta-cognition of sleep and acquiring the necessary knowledge about sleep and an
objective self-monitoring of sleeping habits, recording the bedtime and wake-up time. The
purpose of this research was to examine whether the CBT method of sleep improvement iseffective for high-school students in preventing dozing and facilitating concentration duringclasses.
If high-school students can improve their bad sleeping habits and feel better in thedaytime, they can concentrate better during classes. This research tested this hypothesis.
The measurement of the level of concentration has been a technical problem, but a new
device solves it. Recently, a Japanese company has developed a light glass-type convenientdevice called JINS MEME ES, which measures the level of concentration in terms of２

Insomnia is the difficulty of falling asleep or staying asleep.

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electrooculography ３ (EOG) and blinks of the eye (Kanoh et al., 2015).

In theexperimental study with the device, high-school students successfully improved theirconcentration after smelling a special fragrance and doing short physical exercises (JINS
MEME, 2018).
In Study 1 of the present study, the participants measured their concentration whenlearning or being taught using the JINS MEME ES device during class hours and theconcentration level was calculated in terms of percentage of cumulated concentrated time to
the whole measurement time.
In Study 2, some participants recorded sleep by the activity-based sleep monitor called
MTN-220４ all the day long once a week in order to calculate the sleep efficiency using the
Sleep Sign Act ver 2.0５ software.

Picture 1 On the left, the device to measure the concentration level called JINSMEME ES６. On the right, the activity-based sleep monitor called MTN-220.
The experiments were carried out from April to June 2017 at Kobe University
Secondary School. When the experiments were finished, all the participants were thefourth grade (first grade high school) students of the school. Before the experiments, theprotocol of this research was reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Committee ofthe school. After the experiments were approved, Sugiyama recruited participants from herclassmates. They were volunteers. The participants and their parents read and signed theconsent form of the experiment. The control group of Study 2 also received the sleep
education after the experiment was over.

３

Electrooculography is a technique for measuring the eye movement in terms of the electrical changes
on the surface of the eye.
４
See Matsuo et al. (2016)５https://www.kicnet.co.jp/solutions/biosignal/sleep/sleepsignact/
６
https://jins-meme.com/ja/products/es/― 95 ―

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Study 1 (Preliminary Study)
PurposeThe purpose of Study 1 was to examine the effect of the CBT method as to see
whether it improved sleeping habits and concentration during classes.
Methods
Two 16-year-old female high school students participated in Study 1. Once in a week,
each participant measured their concentration level during classes in terms of thepercentage of cumulative duration of concentrated period to the measurement time.
Table 1 List of self-help treatments effective for improving sleep(Tanaka & Furutani, 2012 )Table 2 Self-help treatments which each participant
adopted as a weekly goal in the CBT― 96 ―SUGIYAMAMAIYAFURUTANIMURANAKAIn the beginning of the experiment, each participant received the sleep education, andfor the following weeks they undertook the CBT method, setting a weekly goal of the sleep
improvement while continuing the self-monitoring practice. Through the sleep education,
the participants checked the list of self-help treatments effective for improving sleep forhigh school students (Tanaka and Furutani, 2012). Each participant set maximally threeuncompleted self-help treatments as their weekly goal. The treatments adopted as weekly
goal are shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
Results
The results are shown in Figure 1 to Figure 3. Figure 1 shows the average bedtime in
the first week (baseline) and in the first week of self-help improvement of sleep by the CBT
method (CBT1 of st1). Figure 2 shows the wake up time in the first week (baseline of st1)
and in the first CBT week (CBT1 of st1). As shown in Figure 1, the average of bedtime was
earlier in the CBT first week than in the baseline. However, the average wake up time did
not change between the baseline and the CBT first week (Figure 2).
13:00
1:15 AM
1:00 AM
12:45
12:45 AM
12:30
12:30 AM

12:15

baselinebaseline

12:15 AM

12:00

CBT1
CBT1

12:00 AM

11:45

11:45 PM

11:30

11:30 PM

11:15
11:15 PM
11:00
11:00 PM

st1st1st2exprst2exprst2contr
st2contr

Figure 1 Bedtime
7:45
7:30
7:15
7:00
6:45
6:30
6:15
6:00

baseline
CBT1

st1

st2exprst2contr

Figure 2 Wake-up time

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大学教育研究第 27 号（2019）

60%
50%
40%

f101

30%

f102

20%
10%
0%

baseline1 baseline2

CBT1

CBT2

Figure 3 Concentration level of each participant
Figure 3 shows changes in the level of concentration in the first baseline week(baseline1), the second baseline week (baseline2) and in the first CBT week (CBT1) andthe second CBT week (CBT2). If the sleep education and the CBT method are effective,
the level of concentration is expected to increase in the CBT weeks, while not to change inthe baseline weeks before the sleep education and the CBT method. As shown in Figure 3,
the level of concentration was different between the participants. These results do notindicate any reliable effects of the CBT method upon concentration when learning or beingtaught.
Study 2 (Experimental design: experimental group vs. control group)
PurposeThe purpose of Study 2 was to examine the effects of the CBT method in theexperimental design of two levels, the experimental group versus the control group. In
order to measure the whole day activity and to calculate the sleep efficiency, someparticipants measured their heart rate using the activity-based sleep monitor all day long
during the experimental period. Because the concentration during classes did not change
clearly in Study 1, the measurement of the concentration was not done in Study 2.
Methods
9 high-school students (3 males and 6 females) participated in the control group and 6
high-school students (1 male and 5 females) participated in the experimental group.
The experiment continued for four weeks for both groups. From the first week to thelast (forth) week, the participants from both groups recorded the bed-in time, the wake-up― 98 ―SUGIYAMAMAIYAFURUTANIMURANAKA

time, their daytime feelings, and some of them measured their whole-day activity using theactivity-based sleep monitor (MTN-220). The experimental group also self-rated daytime
feelings and feelings of the wake up time once a week.
At the beginning of the second week, only the experimental group received the sleep
education, and for the following three weeks they undertook the CBT method, setting one
weekly goal of the sleep improvement and continuing the self-monitoring. In the sleep
education, the participants checked the list of self-help treatments and each participant set
maximally two uncompleted self-help treatments as their weekly goal (Table 1).
Results
Figure 1 shows the average bedtime in the first baseline week and in the first CBTweek in the experimental group. Figure 2 shows the wake up time in the baseline and in
the first CBT week in the experimental group. The results of the experimental groupindicate the improvement in sleep. As shown in Figure 1, the average bedtime was earlier inthe first CBT week than the baseline, while it was unchanged for two weeks in the control
group. As shown in Figure 2, the average wake-up time did not change between thebaseline and the first CBT week in the experimental group.
Self-rating scores of the degree of sleep (Figure 4) and the comfort at wake-up time
(Figure 5) increased for two out of the three participants, which suggest the improvement of
sleep. Table 3 shows the self-rated scores of the easiness in falling asleep, feelings at the
wake-up time, the depth of sleep, and the quality of sleep in the baseline and in the first
CBT week. The participant 222 did not measure these scores. If the sleep education and the
CBT method are effective, these scores are expected to increase because of the
improvement of the sleep habits. Table 3 indicates that all the indices show an increase
except for the index “falling asleep” of the participant 224.
As shown in Figure 6, the tendencies of sleep efficiency are different among the threeparticipants. Two out of the three participants showed a decrease from the first CBT week
to the second CBT week, while the other participant did not show a significant change incomparison with the baseline. Therefore, any reliable tendency was not found as a result of
the measurement of whole-day activity with the micro activity tracker.
After the experiment was over, the interview was conducted with each participant in
the experimental group. One participant said that the dozing during classes was reduced byusing the CBT method. Another participant said that afternoon naps became lesser in the
CBT weeks than in the baseline. These statements suggest that the CBT method was
effective for some participants.

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10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
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大学教育研究第 27 号（2019）

baseline
CBT1

221

222

224

Figure 4 Sleep degree

10
9
8
7
6

baseline

5

CBT1

4
3
2
1

221

222

224

Figure 5 Comfort degree at wake up time
Table 3 Self-rated indices of daily sleep quality** Perfect score is 100 points. The participant 222 did not measure these indices.

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95%
90%
85%
212
80%

213
214

75%
70%
65%

baseline

CBT1

CBT2

Figure 6 Sleep-efficiency (%) measured by the micro activity tracker
Discussion
The average bedtime became earlier in the first CBT week than in the baseline, andtwo out of the three participants reported a positive change in the self-rated indices of sleep
and feelings. Therefore, it can be concluded that the CBT method has positive effects upon
the improvement of sleeping habit. However, the measurement of concentration did notgive any reliable results as to the improvement of concentration and dozing.
There still remain technical issues to be solved. For example, JINS MEME ES did notwork several times, and the participants sometimes failed to set it when it worked. Unlesssuch technical problems are solved, the next research cannot be done with this device tomeasure dozing and concentration.
In spite the fact that more than twenty students were expected to participate in thisresearch, only eleven students could participate because of the school related activities suchas examination and the sport meetings in the high school. In order to do the experimentwith enough number of participants, it should have been carried out in the second term of
the school year instead of the first term.
Acknowledgement
Miss Mihaela Sighnas revised the poster and this paper. We thank her for her revision.
Reference
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Application: Research and Development toward Sensing Technology and good

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