Daylight saving time may also be good for morning risers, a study finds

Daylight saving time may also be good for morning risers, a study finds

Night owls may be excited to return to fall time, but a new study from the University of Ottawa has found that daylight savings time is also good for morning types.

The research of Dr. Stuart Fogel, a cognitive neuroscientist, professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Psychology and researcher at the Royal Institute for Mental Health Research, sheds light on how a person's circadian rhythm and activity level during waking and sleep relate to human intelligence. Contrary to the saying, “The early bird catches the worm,” previous work suggests that evening types, or “owls,” have superior verbal intelligence.

"However, once you take into account key factors like bedtime and age, we found that the opposite is true, that morning types tend to have superior verbal skills," says Stuart Fogel, director of the University of Ottawa's Sleep Research Laboratory. “This result was surprising to us and signals that this is much more complicated than anyone previously thought.”

Fogel's team identified the individual's chronotype - their evening or morning tendencies - by monitoring biological rhythms and daily preferences. A person's chronotype depends on when in the day they prefer demanding things, from intellectual pursuits to physical activity.

Young people are typically “evening types,” while older people and those who are more regular in their daily/nightly activities are likely to be “morning types.” The juxtaposition here is that mornings are critically important for young people, especially school-age children and teenagers, whose schedules are set by their morning parents and their routines. This could be doing young people a disservice.

Many school start times are determined not by our chronotypes but by parents and work schedules, so school-aged children pay the price for being evening types forced to work on a morning schedule.

Dr. Stuart Fogel, cognitive neuroscientist, professor at the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa

"For example, math and science classes are typically scheduled early in the day because their morning tendencies will serve them well. But morning is not the time when they are at their best because of their evening tendencies. Ultimately, they are at a disadvantage because the type of schedule imposed on them is essentially fighting their biological clock every day."

The study involved volunteers from a wide age range who were rigorously screened to rule out sleep disorders and other confounding factors. They equipped volunteers with a monitoring device to measure activity levels.

Determining the strength of a person's rhythm that drives intelligence is key to understanding the results of this nuanced study, says Fogel, with a person's age and actual bedtime emerging as important factors.

“Our brains really crave regularity, and in order for us to be optimal in our own rhythm, we need to stick to that schedule and not constantly try to catch up,” adds Fogel.

Source:

University of Ottawa

Reference:

Gibbings, A., et al. (2022) Does the early bird really get the worm? How chronotype is related to human intelligence. Current research in the behavioral sciences. doi.org/10.1016/j.crbeha.2022.100083.

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