Does the early bird actually get the worm? A review of time of day effects and individual differences on cognitive tasks

Voiceover

Presenter(s)

Katelyn Stollsteimer

Abstract or Description

A wide variety of research has been done on how time of day affects performance in several fields of study, including sports, academics, and shift work. However, time of day effects can also be seen on a variety of cognitive and attentional tasks. Overall, differences are observed between morning and night chronotypes, which are what we typically define as “early birds” and “night owls.” This effect has been termed as the synchrony effect in which performance is better at optimal times of day and worse at nonoptimal times of day (Nowack & Van Der Meer, 2018). Several studies including those done by Nowack & Van Der Meer (2018) and Smit et al. (2019) have seen morning chronotypes as being effective at their cognitive and attentional tasks, regardless of time of day, whereas evening chronotypes show deficits during the morning testing sessions. However, there is some disagreement in the literature as a study by Ceglarek et al. (2021) showed evening types to be more efficient at their tasks, regardless of time of day. These findings may have implications for the time of day at which studies are conducted. This presentation will review the literature surrounding the synchrony effect, specifically the impact of time of day on performance on cognitive tasks. At the end I will propose a novel experiment to further the literature.