Sleep debt does not work like a financial one, where a large repayment settles the account. After several short nights, a single long sleep restores alertness only partially; measures of reaction time and judgment stay depressed for days. Worse, the impairment is difficult to notice from the inside. People who have slept five hours a night for a week rate their own alertness as nearly normal while performing measurably worse, which makes self-assessment an unreliable guide and is the reason safety-critical industries set hour limits rather than asking workers whether they feel fit.
Which conclusion is best supported by the passage?
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Correct!
Not quite. The correct answer is highlighted.
Correct answer to question 19 (Paragraph Comprehension): Workers cannot be relied on to judge their own fitness for duty
Method
The passage states that people rate themselves as nearly normal while performing worse, and gives that as the reason industries set hour limits instead of asking. The second and third choices contradict the passage, and it never compares the recovery rates of reaction time and judgment.
Updated: November 2026
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