We all know that the normal human daily cycle of activity is of some 7--8 hours’ sleep alternating with some 16--17 hours’ wakefulness and that, broadly speaking, the sleep normally coincides with the hours of darkness. Our present concern is with how easily and to what extent this cycle can be modified. The question is no mere academic one. The case, for example, with which people can change from working in the day to working at night is a question of growing importance in industry where automation calls insistently for round-the-clock working of machines. It normally takes from five days to one week for a person to adapt to a reversed routine of sleep and wakefulness, sleeping during the day and working at night. Unfortunately, it is often the case in industry that shies are changed every week; a person may work from 12 midnight to 8 a.m. one week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. the next, and 4 p.m. to 12 midnight the third and so on. This means that no sooner has he got used to one routine than he has to change to another, so that much of his time is spent neither working nor sleeping very efficiently. One answer would seem to be longer periods on each shift, a month, or even three months. Recent research by Bonjer of the Netherlands, however, has shown that people on such systems will revert to their normal habits of sleep and wakefulness during the week-end and that this is quite enough to destroy any adaptation to night work built up during the week. The only real solution appears to be to hand over the night shifts to a corps of permanent night workers whose nocturnal wakefulness may persist through all week-ends and holidays. An interesting study of the domestic life and health of night-shifts workers was carried out by Brown in 1957. She found a high incidence of disturbed sleep, digestive disorder and domestic disruption among those on alternating day and night shifts, but no abnormal occurrence of these symptoms among those on permanent night work. This latter system then appears to be the best long-term policy, but meanwhile something may be done to relieve the strains of alternate day and night work by selecting these people who can adapt most quickly to the changes of routine. One way of knowing when a person has adapted is by measuring his performance, but this can be laborious. Fortunately, we again have a physiological measure which correlates reasonably well with the behavioral one, in this case performance at various times of the day or night, and which is easier to take. This is the level of body temperature, as taken by an ordinary clinical thermometer. People engaged in normal daytime work will have a high temperature during the hours of wakefulness and a low one at night; when they change to night work the pattern will only gradually reverse to match the new routine and the speed with which it does so parallels, broadly speaking, the adaptation of the body as a whole, particularly in terms of performance and general alertness. Therefore by taking body temperature at intervals of two hours throughout the period of wakefulness it can be seen how quickly a person can adapt to a reversed routine, and this could be used as a basis for selection. So far, however, such a form of selection does not seem to have been applied in practice. The best answer to the problem seems to be
A. not to change shifts from one week to the next.
B. to have longer periods on each shift.
C. to employ people who will always work at night.
D. to select people who adapt quickly to work at night.