The study comes as people prepare to turn their clocks back an hour to standard time and challenges contemporary research that suggests those who stay awake have stronger cognitive abilities in problem solving, abstract reasoning and working memory. By assessing the impact of a person’s daily rhythm and activity levels, Dr. Stuart Fogel, a cognitive neuroscientist and professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Psychology, has potentially discovered new value in the old adage “the early bird gets the worm.” “After taking into account key factors such as bedtime and age,” he said in a press release, “we found that morning types tend to have superior verbal ability. This result was surprising to us and signals that this is much more complex than previously thought.” But these results depend on one important factor. Fogel, director of the University of Ottawa’s Sleep Research Laboratory, worked with a team of researchers to determine a person’s “chronotype” — that is, their evening or morning tendencies — by assessing daily preferences and biological rhythms. According to Fogel, a person’s chronotype is linked to when they are most willing to engage in demanding tasks and correlates with optimal performance. Research shows that young people are usually categorized as “evening types” while older people are more likely to be “morning types”. Vogel warns that feeding schedules, which are not compatible with people’s chronotypes, can limit cognitive potential. “A lot of school hours aren’t set by our schedules, but by parents and work schedules, so school-age kids pay the price for being afternoon types forced to work a morning-type schedule,” Fogel said. “For example, math and science classes are usually scheduled early in the day because whatever morning tendencies they have will serve them well. But AM is not when they are at their best because of their evening type tendencies. Ultimately, they’re at a disadvantage because the kind of schedule they’re forced into is basically fighting against their biological clock every day.” Through rigorous screening of volunteers representing a wide age range, the study measured activity levels while identifying sleep patterns and numerous confounding factors. Fogel believes that establishing a person’s rhythm, which feeds general intelligence, is the bridge between bedtime and cognitive functioning. “Our brains really crave regularity, and to be optimal at our own pace is to stick to that schedule and not constantly try to catch up,” she said.
