Citation

Bruck D, Horasan M. Fire Safety J. 1995; 25(2): 125-139.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Twenty-four young adults were exposed twice to a smoke detector alarm activated at 60 dBA. Unlike previous studies, all subjects were unprepared for the first alarm activation (naive) and the stage of sleep in which the alarms occurred was manipulated, with the alarm being activated twice in either stage 4, stage 2 or REM sleep for each subject. Upon being woken, time estimations, dream reports, alarm interpretations and computer reaction times were collected. Five subjects (20%) did not reliably awaken to the alarms and this was associated with their reported lack of sleep the night before, and unrelated to the stage of sleep or whether it was the first or second (non-naive) alarm presentation. Of the awakening, 87% occurred within 1 min of the alarm and no differences in time to awaken were evident between the first 'naive' and second 'non-naive' awakening. When awoken by the first alarm, 95% took no action within 2 min and 92% did not correctly interpret the alarm nature of the signal. Dream incorporation was not an important variable. Estimations of time to awaken were highly correlated with actual time to awaken for the 'non-naive' condition. Neither time to wake across different sleep stages nor analysis of the reaction time data revealed significant differences.