Research suggests that morning people perform worse on cognitive tests.

About the episode

Staying up late and staying up late: The night owls among us know that this isn’t always seen as a positive thing – depending on your field of work, of course – by the rest of the world.

Hardworking people wake up early, are instantly ready for their day and make sure to finish all their tasks on time.

Previous research has already indicated that people who nap do not have an impact on concentration and performance during the day compared to “straight” people.

Now researchers say this also applies to going to bed late and waking up late.

To do this, they studied data from 26,000 people who took tests of intelligence, reaction times and memory. They compared this to their sleep patterns. They say they could see that morning people scored lower on cognitive tests, while evening people and those in between scored higher.

Not everyone is as sure about the implications of these findings. Because it says nothing about the detailed mechanisms in the brain that underlie them. What exactly is the link between sleep patterns and cognition? How does one affect the other?

It was also not made clear, for example, at what time of day these cognitive tests were administered. There are a number of limitations.

However, the researchers say they can also say something about sleep duration. Whether you’re an evening person or a morning person: Getting enough sleep always seems to matter. And between 7 and 9 hours seems to be best for cognitive tasks. This is in line with what we’ve already seen in previous studies, but again: this study has its limitations.

If you want to learn a lesson from this, perhaps sleeping more is better for concentration than going from morning person to evening person.

However, as a night owl, I’m always happy to find some potential evidence that this is a great rhythm for me and my brain. And that in the case of snoozing and sleeping late, it probably doesn’t mean I’m any less sharp than a morning person.

Read more about the research here: Night owls have ‘better’ cognitive function than early risers, study suggests