Why larks are brighter than night owls

SOME people are larks who leap out of bed in the morning, raring to go. Others are owls and need an alarm clock to get them going.

There’s evidence that these differences are rooted in our genes, but they also depend on our age. Most of us are owl-like as teenagers, but start to display lark-like tendencies as we get older.

My wife, Clare, is an exception. Despite being 61, she will still quite happily stay up working until the small hours, while I prefer to head for bed soon after 10pm.

As a lark I was delighted by a new report (which of course I waved in front of Clare) claiming that larks are cleverer than owls, at least when it comes to verbal abilities. In a study at the University of Ottawa, 61 people underwent tests that measured things such as short-term memory. Participants also wore devices to monitor their sleeping patterns. Previous studies have found that owls, on the whole, are more extrovert, do better in IQ tests and earn more.

But the researchers behind this study found that ‘once you account for key factors including bedtime and age... the opposite [is] true, that morning types tend to have superior verbal ability’.

This is consistent with another study that found larks tend to do better at school. Probably because they are more likely to be awake and lively in the mornings.