Effect of Chronotype on Cognitive Tasks
The chronograph is a classification system to understand productivity and sleep patterns, including for an active and alert person. A chronotype is the person's tendency to sleep at any given time within 24 hours. However, as the development progresses, sleep patterns change. Pre-adolescent children prefer long sleep time, teenagers prefer delayed sleep time, and many elderly people prefer long sleep time. The causes and adjustments of chronotypes, including developmental changes, individual tendencies toward specific phenotypes, and fixed versus flexible phenotypes, are not yet determined. Studies have, however, begun to bring to light the issues including the association between chronotype and age. Cognitive tasks are assignments that require people to process new information mentally. During the process, they get and learn new things enabling them to retrieve the information. They can also use that information later in the same situation (Cazzoli et.al, 2014).
Chronotypes and Circadian Rhythms
When it comes to sleep patterns, it is also crucial to differentiate circadian rhythms and chronotypes. While these are the same, they both play a special role in sleep and can help you understand habits and increase productivity. The circadian rhythm is related to alertness and drowsiness. The internal clocks control the brain’s hypothalamus and are also called "sleep/wake cycles." They determine when you sleep and wake up. For most adults, the circadian rhythm is lowest from 2 am and 4 am. However, this may change depending on whether you are an early bird or a night owl. On the other hand, the chronology is a guide for how the circadian rhythm functions in daily life. Often regarded as a productivity tool, they can help you comprehend the influence of sleep patterns in your life. This includes activity levels, alertness, and the best time to handle specific tasks (Chua et.al, 2017).
The research on phenotype began in the 1970s, and has since been expanded and standardized into the four animal chronotypes that currently exist. These animals contribute to the grouping and generalization of circadian rhythms in nature. While chronotypes are not an exact science, they're interesting when it comes to understanding your life. Usually, people fall into one category, but it is common to have more than one subtle characteristic. Chronotypes and circadian rhythms are considerably constant, but daily energy contains many variables to accurately define when to perform tasks (Correa et.al, 2016).
Psychological Time
Psychological time actually affects the entire parts of human life. Scientific research focuses on three main aspects of psychological time: time sequence, duration, and personal time orientation. Time length refers to the manner in which people encounter an interval between events or the persistence of events. For example, factors that affect duration estimation include cognitive load and whether duration estimation needs to be performed (that is, the expected time estimation after a deliberate process) or not. There are also notifications that are retrospective time estimates with stored procedures. High cognitive load will increase the duration estimate of retrospective evaluation, while high cognitive load seems to lead to shorter duration estimate of prospective evaluation. Therefore, duration estimation should be influenced by cognitive skills, such as working memory ability and mental speed (Goel et.al, 2011).
Consistent with this, there are proofs that fluid intelligence affects duration estimation, and that a higher fluid intelligence score is associated with a more precise subjective time estimate compared in relation to a minimal fluid intelligence score. There are various duration models, like those in favor of one common timing method or those that suggest a timing capability based on memory decay or neutral activation. The mental order of time seems to depend on the normal order of events. In the usual sequence of events, the chronology seems to be enhanced by the great power of cooperation between small events. Finding time for a series of events also includes a quick and automatic search. In a typical sequence of events, the chronology appears to be embedded in contextual information about the environment (such as snow or sun) or internal states (such as feeling cold) alongside particular sub-events (Honma, et.al, 2010).
Recalling a timeline from the less usual sequence of events requires more controlled construction processes that bring together elements of memory and internal knowledge of social, personal, and natural time systems. Another crucial thing is someone's temporal orientation. While psychological research usually focuses on the concept of perception of time, which is related to one's experiences and perceptions of the past, present, and future, biological methods aim to focus on annual and daily patterns such as chronotype to study time effect on animal and human behavior. The third measure of perception of time, experience in organizational psychology, is the depth of time, which refers to the periods of time people focus on remembering past events or anticipating future events. It is also vital to know the three levels of personal orientation, time perspective, temporal depth, and chronotype (Ingram et.al, 2016).
Time Perspective
The time perspective construct implies individual preferences on the basis of their decision-making processes and behavior for a specific time period (e.g., past, present, or future). People differ in the manner in which they overestimate a perspective at a particular time. For example, modern people tend to base their actions and decisions on the immediate rewards that the current situation offers. Such people focus on the expected results of current behavior in the future. People with past tendencies rely on their current actions on results and occasions they remember from the past. At the cognitive level, perception of time is thought to arise from cognitive component processes that facilitate the continuous flow of human experience in the past, present, and future. At the biological level, it is assumed that the future will change in a stable and predictable environment, while an environment characterized by resource unpredictability and instability of the future supports the development of more modern behavior (Lara et.al, 2014).
Temporal Depth
Time horizon or temporal depth is different from a time perspective. Time perspective relates to the relative significance provided in the past, present, or future. But temporal depth regards to the temporal distances that people usually travel when thinking about the future or remembering the past events. Even though time perspective is not associated with temporal depth, the past and future temporal depth are related. The more distance you normally consider when thinking about past events, the bigger the distance you contemplate in the future when planning about events in the future. It is something in line with functional neuroimaging studies, different positron emission tomography (PET), and constructive episodic simulation hypothesis. They emphasize how parts of personal memory are used to create intellectual representations of the future of the individual (Lehmann et.al, 2013).
Thinking of the future and remembering the past does not just cause overlapping of the brain activation. The same with circadian rhythms, which are primarily influenced by light, temporal depths (social level) in organizations, they seem to depend on the social duration that delays organizational rhythms, such as the interval between feedback on their results and management decisions. Long periods of opinion seem to be associated with a broader future temporal depth. Similarly, the depth of a person's time can also be affected by the dynamic timer and hence the circadian rhythms. However, the relationship between chronotypes and temporal depth has not yet been explored (Maghsoudipour et.al, 2019).
Integration of Psychological Time Factors and Cognitive Abilities
Time, continuity, and individual orientation must be linked to each other. For example, dialing a time sequence for a regular sequence of events from long-term memory should also include time duration recall. According to K-factor theories, time is a fundamental part of human behavior and experience. Successful adaptation of time cycle systems (e.g., day and night circadian rhythms; annual seasonal rhythms) is essential to ensure survival. In addition, time has been determined from changes in the environment, as it cannot be perceived directly. Thus, psychological time is associated with cognitive processes (abstraction) that require cognitive resources and are probably based on basal cognitive abilities. Parallel to this, there is proof of the relationship between psychological time, time sequence, ability, and cognitive load. In terms of cognitive skills, the concept of the human mind encompasses many of the intellectual skills needed to learn, understand, and interact effectively with the environment. One of the human intelligence structures that have dominated the culture of psychology is crystallized intelligence and the theory of fluid (Martínez-Pérez Víctor et.al, 2020).
Script Knowledge and Crystallized Intelligence
Crystallized intelligence is the capability to apply obtained skills and includes learned knowledge like vocabulary. Considering that crystallized intelligence is obtained throughout life, it remains stable or even increases slightly with age. Another element of crystallized intelligence is script knowledge. It refers to the intellectual representation of daily events that consist of common agents, tools, actions, places, and temporary information encrypted and stored in semantic memory when people experience events, such as preparing for work (Rosenberg et.al, 2015).
Since small events occur in order ("forward"), they are also stored in this common order, and script knowledge and typical temporal order to the sequence of events in memory. Thus, the extant literature suggests that this time frame of the mental "view" portrays that the mentally coded temporal progression also called the time cognitive arrow is involved in visually presented gravity stimuli, event pairs, and routine event sequences. It processes small events that are displayed in the reverse order, disrupting the cognitive schedule which leads to a boost in cognitive load, error rates, and reaction time. Recall and acquisition of crystallized information is however reliance on fluid intelligence (Sithravel et.al, 2018).
Executive Functions, Analogical Reasoning, and Fluid Intelligence
Fluid intelligence has been described as the ability to think logically, to solve new problems, and to draw conclusions without relying on previous knowledge using problem-solving strategies. It includes executive functions like inhibition, shifting, and updating which are important processes "to regulate and control thoughts and actions." Fluid intelligence on the opposite of crystallized intelligence increases with time during young adulthood. After that point, it declines. Analogical reasoning is the process of high-level cognition that associates with fluid intelligence. It is the relational information transfer to known relations, to a different domain, and to unknown relations. Analogical reasoning is a fundamental part of human thinking as it discovers new knowledge and understands new concepts based on common knowledge. Accordingly, people with a lot of fluid intelligence are well aware of analog thinking. The ability to identify comparisons depends largely on performance tasks (Taporoski et.al, 2019).
In particular, analogous reasoning requires the activation of appropriate functions while preventing meaningless tasks, maintaining and controlling mental representation. That is updating mental representations stored in memory to identify and map communication between the duo elements. It has been demonstrated that the entire executive functions are linked to fluid intelligence as shown by psychometric tests. In particular, there is only the update of fluid intelligence results, the switching between mental groups, and the update of irrelevant features that are inhibited. Therefore, simulation thinking research should also include fluid intelligence measurements to analyze the relationship with cognitive performance other than fluid intelligence (i.e., control fluid intelligence values). According to some classifications, in addition to the update, inhibition, and shifting, the executive function also includes a fourth function, namely target management, which includes conflict management and target maintenance. The anterior cingular cortex (ACC) is often associated with management and conflict detection. For example, ACCs are usually heavily activated in intervening tasks that require the suppression of large responses and in settings characterized by a high level of conflict. Conflicts are also said to increase the need for cognitive resources. The ACC's response to the conflict has also been linked to arousal adjustments and pupil dilation (Zauner et.al, 2020).
Body Temperature, Performance, and Alertness
It is reported that body temperature affects a person's performance. A person performs maximally during high body temperature or near its circadian peak. On other hand, performance is low in low body temperature or close to the circadian minimum. It was investigated whether the body temperature and performance reflect the regulation of the internal bio-timing system and the effect of body temperature on performance, regardless of the circadian rhythm. The highlights looked in a mandatory desynchronization protocol, which allowed the assessment of body temperature and someone's performance while monitoring the circadian phase and wake-up time. Most neurobehavioral measures vary according to the internal biological time and the duration of arousal. When body temperature rises, many performance indicators are elevated, including subjective alertness, visual attention, working memory, and the slowest 10% reaction time. These results indicate that increased body temperature is related to internal biological time, but is related to increased alertness and performance. These outcomes prove the hypothesis that temperature regulates the neurological function of human behavior (Cazzoli et.al, 2014).
Suprachiasmatic nuclei and preoptic area are part of the brain mechanisms that take part in regulating body temperature. The preoptic region regulates homeostatic mechanisms to control body and brain temperature in mammals in response to environmental and physiological conditions, and the suprachiasmatic nuclei that control near-24-h temperature rhythm or circadian. Circadian and homeostatic mechanisms affect cutaneous vasodilatation, basal metabolism, and peripheral vasoconstriction, and each of them changes the rate of losing or gaining body heat. Even in controlled conditions, it is reported that other factors, such as age and the phase of the menstrual cycle, affect the body temperature rhythm amplitude. It has long been known that there is a positive correlation between the circadian rhythm of body temperature and the performance and alertness of a person's neurological behavior. During complete sleep deprivation, boosted homeostatic sleep leads to decreased performance. However, when evaluated under constant conditions, levels of neurobehavioral performance and body temperature show higher circadian pattern levels during the normal waking day, and in ordinary sleep times, it has the lowest levels. The positive relationship between body temperature and performance rhythms has been confirmed by studies. They looked at controllable factors that can impact performance and body temperature. Some of the factors that may influence include drug intake, posture nutrition, activity, and light exposure (Chua et.al, 2017).
Future Research and Results
It will be necessary for future studies to examine the effects of sustained wakefulness on attention and chronotype, regarding the sensitivity of the pure measure of executive control, orienting, and alerting. The current research contributes to a better comprehending of the impacts of sleep deprivation, time-of-day effects, and chronotype on cognitive functioning. Trials portrayed that attention processing is not completely disrupted after 18 hours of sustained wakefulness. However, particular attention domains are preserved or impaired as a chronotype function. The impacts are likely influenced by relative variations and changes in dopaminergic activity and frontal functioning between chronotypes during waking. The outcomes can be meaningfully translated to other cognitive processing areas. For instance, successful inhibition is needed for many cognitive processes, including language comprehension and speech production. Such processes need careful control over action and thought (Correa et.al, 2016).
References
Cazzoli, D., Antoniades, C. A., Kennard, C., Nyffeler, T., Bassetti, C. L., & Müri, R.,M. (2014). Eye movements discriminate fatigue due to chronotypical factors and time spent on task. PLoS One, 9(1) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087146
Chua, E. C., Fang, E., & Gooley, J. J. (2017). Divided attention performance and impacts of total sleep deprivation. PLoS One, 12(11) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187098
Correa, Á., Barba, A., & Padilla, F. (2016). Light effects on behavioral performance on the individual vigilance condition. PLoS One, 11(11) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164945
Goel, N., Banks, S., Lin, L., Mignot, E., & Dinges, D. F. (2011). Catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met polymorphism associates with individual differences in sleep physiologic responses to chronic sleep loss. PLoS One, 6(12) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029283
Honma, M., Soshi, T., Kim, Y., & Kuriyama, K. (2010). Right prefrontal activity and the ability to overcome sleepiness: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study. PLoS One, 5(9) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012923
Ingram, K. K., Ay, A., Kwon, S. B., Woods, K., Escobar, S., Gordon, M., . . . Jain, K. (2016). Molecular insights into time-of-day effects and chronotype on decision-making. Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group), 6, 29392. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep29392
Lara, T., Madrid, J. A., & Correa, Á. (2014). Vigilance decrement: Executive function is attenuated when chronotypes perform optimally. PLoS One, 9(2) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088820
Lehmann, C. A., Marks, A. D. G., & Hanstock, T. L. (2013). Synchrony and age effects in performance on verbal learning test. International Psychogeriatrics, 25(4), 657-65. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1041610212002013
Maghsoudipour, M., Moradi, R., Pouyakian, M., Yaseri, M., & Moghimi, S. (2019). Task effects on sleepiness of bus drivers and working memory. Sleep, 42 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsz067.630
Martínez-Pérez Víctor, Palmero, L. B., Guillermo, C., & Fuentes, L. J. (2020). Chronotype role in the interaction between the executive control networks and alerting. Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group), 10(1) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68755-z
Rosenberg, J., Reske, M., Warbrick, T., & Shah, N. J. (2015). Chronotype modulates language processing that is associated with cerebral activity in functional MRI (fMRI). PLoS One, 10(9) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137197
Sithravel, R., ⨯, R. I., ⨯ Munn, S. L., ⨯ Enoch, K. P., ⨯, N. I., & ⨯ Nur Dalilah Dahlan ⨯. (2018). Morning boost on psychophysiological wellbeing indicators on supportive, dynamic lighting in windowless workplace. PLoS One, 13(11) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207488
Taporoski, T. P., Duarte, N. E., Pompéia, S., Sterr, A., Gómez, ,L.M., Alvim, R. O., . . . Negrão, ,A.B. (2019). Semantic verbal fluency task heritability utilizing time-interval analysis. PLoS One, 14(6) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217814
Zauner, J., Plischke, H., Stijnen, H., Schwarz, U. T., & Strasburger, H. (2020). Influence of time-of-day and common lighting conditions on the effort-associated with cardiac response. PLoS One, 15(10) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239553