Effect of the time-of-day of training on explicit memory

Abstract

Studies have shown a time-of-day of training effect on long-term explicit memory with a greater effect being shown in the afternoon than in the morning. However, these studies did not control the chronotype variable. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess if the time-of-day effect on explicit memory would continue if this variable were controlled, in addition to identifying the occurrence of a possible synchronic effect. A total of 68 undergraduates were classified as morning, intermediate, or afternoon types. The subjects listened to a list of 10 words during the training phase and immediately performed a recognition task, a procedure which they repeated twice. One week later, they underwent an unannounced recognition test. The target list and the distractor words were the same in all series. The subjects were allocated to two groups according to acquisition time: a morning group (N = 32), and an afternoon group (N = 36). One week later, some of the subjects in each of these groups were subjected to a test in the morning (N = 35) or in the afternoon (N = 33). The groups had similar chronotypes. Long-term explicit memory performance was not affected by test time-of-day or by chronotype. However, there was a training time-of-day effect [F (1,56) = 53.667; P = 0.009] with better performance for those who trained in the afternoon. Our data indicated that the advantage of training in the afternoon for long-term memory performance does not depend on chronotype and also that this performance is not affected by the synchronic effect.

A diary after dinner: How the time of event recording influences later accessibility of diary events

“…However, our findings are consistent with previous results showing that the time of retrieval (morning/evening) did not affect the current memory performance (e.g. Barbosa & Albuquerque, 2008;Folkard & Monk, 1978;Gais et al, 2006). Although the time of reactivation of the events (morning vs. evening) had no effect on the number of recorded events in the first phase of the experiment, the time of recording had a significant influence on the long-term accessibility of the reactivated memories.…”

“…Folkard and Monk (1978) as well as Barbosa and Albuquerque (2008), Gais, Lucas and Born (2006) also found that only the time of learning influenced the longterm recall performance in a group of high school students, but the time of testing had no effect on later memory. Authors argued that a possible explanation of better memory for materials learnt in the evening could be that learning in the evening is usually followed by sleeping.…”

“…Most of the previous studies (e.g. Barbosa & Albuquerque, 2008;Folkard & Monk, 1978;Gais et al, 2006) showed that the time of recall has no influence on memory performance (for opposite results see e.g. Mather & Knight, 2005).…”

“…Most of other studies, however, reported rather different results suggesting that only the time of learning and not the time of testing influences long-term memory performance. Barbosa and Albuquerque (2008) investigated only undergraduate students and showed that the time of testing did not affect memory performance one week after the study phase, but participants were better in recognizing words learnt in the afternoon when compared to recall rate for words learnt in the morning.…”

Nfluence of the Time of the Day and Chronotype on Speed Abilities in Junior Team Ice Hockey Players

“…Based on the results of the questionnaire, subjects are divided into five different categories: extreme morning type, moderate morning type, intermediate type, moderate afternoon type, and extreme afternoon type. Barbosa and Albuquerque (2008), Kim, Dueker, Hasher, and Goldstein (2002), and May and Hasher (1998) have suggested that the chronotype of a subject may change over the course of life and studies indicate that in childhood (between 8 and 12 years) there is a tendency towards being a morning type, whereas in adolescence and in the early adult phase, there is a tendency towards being an afternoon type, returning to the morning type tendency in old age. Researches made by Vančová, Jančoková, Palovičová, and Pivovarniček (2013), and by showed that more than 77.4% of female university students tend to be neither chronotype.…”