Night owls could also be looking forward to falling back into autumn standard time but a latest study from the University of Ottawa has found Daylight Saving Time may suit morning types just wonderful.

Research from Dr. Stuart Fogel, a cognitive neuroscientist, professor on the University of Ottawa’s School of Psychology, and researcher on the Royal’s Institute for Mental Health Research, is shedding light into how the impact of an individual’s each day rhythm and activity levels during each wake and sleep relate to human intelligence. Contrary to the adage “the early bird gets the worm,” previous work suggests that evening types, or “owls,” have superior verbal intelligence.

Yet, “when you account for key aspects including bedtime and age, we found the other to be true, that morning types are likely to have superior verbal ability,” says Stuart Fogel, Director of the University of Ottawa Sleep Research Laboratory. “This consequence was surprising to us and signals that is far more complicated that anyone thought before.”

Fogel’s team identified individual’s chronotype – their evening or morning tendencies – by monitoring biological rhythms and each day preferences. An individual’s chronotype is said to when within the day they like to do demanding things, from mental pursuits to exercise.

Young individuals are typically “evening types” while older individuals and people more frequently entrenched of their each day/nightly activities are likely “morning types”. The juxtaposition here is that morning is critical for young people, especially school aged children and adolescents, who’ve their schedules set by their morning-type parents and their routines. This is likely to be doing children a disservice.

A number of school start times are usually not determined by our chronotypes but by parents and work-schedules, so school-aged kids pay the worth of that because they’re evening types forced to work on a morning type schedule.”

Dr. Stuart Fogel, cognitive neuroscientist, professor on the University of Ottawa’s School of Psychology

“For instance, math and science classes are normally scheduled early within the day because whatever morning tendencies they’ve will serve them well. However the AM is just not after they are at their best on account of their evening type tendencies. Ultimately, they’re disadvantaged since the style of schedule imposed on them is essentially fighting against their biological clock each day.”

The study enlisted volunteers from a large age range, who were rigorously screened to rule out sleep disorders and other confounding aspects. They outfitted volunteers with a monitoring device to measure activity levels.

Establishing the strength of an individual’s rhythm, which drives intelligence, is vital to understanding the outcomes of this nuanced study, says Fogel, with an individual’s age and actual bedtime proving vital aspects.

“Our brain really craves regularity and for us to be optimal in our own rhythms is to persist with that schedule and never be always attempting to catch up,” adds Fogel.

Source:

Journal reference:

Gibbings, A., et al. (2022) Does the early bird really get the worm? How chronotype pertains to human intelligence. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences. doi.org/10.1016/j.crbeha.2022.100083.