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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
It has been known for a long time that early risers work less efficiently at night than night owls do. But researchers from the Higher School of Economics and Oxford University have uncovered new and distinctive features between the night activities of these two types of individuals. At night, early risers demonstrate a quicker reaction time when solving unusual attention-related tasks than night owls, but these early risers make more mistakes along the way.
Twenty-six volunteers (13 male, 13 female) with an average age of 25 participated in the study. Participants were required to stay awake for 18 hours, from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., and adhere to their normal routine. At the beginning and end of their time spent awake, the participants completed an Attention Network Test (ANT) and a Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire to help assess their chronotype.
[...] Overall, the evening people turned out to be slower but more efficient compared to the early risers, according to the second ANT taken at 2:00 a.m. after 18 hours of being awake. 'On the one hand, it's known that night owls are more efficient in the late hours, but how this influences the speed and accuracy with which attention-related tasks are completed remains unclear. Our study demonstrated how night owls working late at night "sacrifice" speed for accuracy,' explained Andriy Myachykov.
Nicola L. Barclay, Andriy Myachykov. Sustained wakefulness and visual attention: moderation by chronotype. Experimental Brain Research, 2016; DOI: 10.1007/s00221-016-4772-8
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:44AM
The chronotype is a factor not only for work structure and performance, but also for learning. The typical adolescent is a nightowl and yet we force them to attend school early in the morning. For all you teachers out there who have to try educate 15...19 year old at 08:30, I feel your pain.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 21 2016, @01:16PM
LOL my son is well into his second class of the day by 8:30.
Probably this drops my latitude doxs, that around this time of year the sun is only up from 8 till 4, and the little elementary kids are at school from 8:30 to 3:30 which gives some time for the buses before and after. Why do little kids take buses? I donno. I grew up three blocks from school and my kids grew up two blocks from school. But, buses. Anyway we're told so many take buses, that they can't transport the middle and high school kids at the same time, supposedly, so the middle and high school kids have insane school hours like 7-2. Not unusual for my kids to go to school in the dark, and supposedly teens are less likely to get themselves run over than five year olds, although watching my kids space out as teens tend to do, as I did as a teen too, I wonder...
The retcon continues with the sole purpose of teen age education is sports, so getting out at 2 means plenty of time for football games and track meets even far away possibly while the sun is still up while still somehow getting home early enough to go to class at 7 the next morning, at least in theory.
When I went to basic training, my contract had a delayed entry program clause where I went to my reserve unit for almost a year first, and all they did was toss all the delayed entry soldiers into a classroom with a "drill private" recently out of basic, instructing us in all we needed to know. The point of this, is with torture levels of sleep deprivation at basic, it took two months to learn everything they teach you in basic, or it only took maybe four weekends worth of good-sleep weekends, its about the same. Its surprising really how little they teach you in basic, your general orders, ranks, something analogous to the NRA rifle or hunter ed course, a pitiful amount of first aid, "how to camp", marching, a couple trivial things. I kid you not, for reasonably smart well rested college students it takes about two minutes to learn and memorize the exact step by step order of splinting a broken leg on a reserve weekend, but at basic when you only get a couple hours of sleep if you don't have fire guard and its been that way for weeks, it takes like hours and multiple repetitions to learn simple things.
Another interesting military analogy is the absolute time of day doesn't matter for early / late risers, its all relative. In civilian life the early risers are at work by 7 and the late hung over kids at 10, and in the military the early risers get up at 3:30 and the late risers around 3:55 (or even after 4:00am, god help them) but its the same proportion of people and same general attitudes toward early/late.
I worked at an international finance company some decades ago and we all lived eastern timezone but not in eastern timezone, and that was interesting, and again the absolute time values didn't matter as much as relative.