The Cognitive Boost at the Peak of Circadian Arousal is Not as General as Previously Thought!
Mon-HS3-Talk III-01
Presented by: Alodie Rey-Mermet
Cognitive performance is assumed to be enhanced at the peak of circadian arousal compared to at off peak. This so-called synchrony effect is generally accepted as common knowledge. However, empirical evidence for this effect is mixed. This may be explained by two methodological challenges. First, most previous studies are underpowered. Second, these studies include one task, but the tasks differ across the studies. In the present study, we addressed these methodological challenges by asking 191 participants with morning or evening types to perform eight tasks at on- and off-peak times. We focused on two universal constructs: the temporary maintenance of information (i.e., the ability to maintain information for a short duration) and attentional control (i.e., the ability to avoid being distracted irrelevant information). We estimated both constructs at the latent-variable level (i.e., as the common variance across the tasks without the impact of task-specific requirements). Contrary to the expectations, the results showed no synchrony effect for the maintenance of information. For attentional control, we observed a latent change between both on- and off-peak times. However, this change was at best small. Moreover, it was not robust across the different data transformations, participants’ selections, trimming procedures, and analyses. Together, the present results indicate that the synchrony effect is not as general and robust as the last 30 years of research seems to suggest.
Keywords: cognitive control, attentional control, executive functions, working memory, synchrony effect, latent change, individual differences