The Tick-Tock of Language: Is Language Processing Sensitive to Circadian Rhythmicity and Elevated Sleep Pressure?

Abstract

The master circadian pacemaker emits signals that trigger organ-specific oscillators and, therefore, constitutes a basic biological process that enables organisms to anticipate daily environmental changes by adjusting behavior, physiology, and gene regulation. Although circadian rhythms are well characterized on a physiological level, little is known about circadian modulations of higher cognitive functions. Thus, we investigated circadian repercussions on language performance at the level of minimal syntactic processing by means of German noun phrases in ten young healthy men under the unmasking conditions of a 40 h constant-routine protocol. Language performance for both congruent and incongruent noun phrases displayed a clear diurnal rhythm with a peak performance decrement during the biological night. The nadirs, however, differed such that worst syntactic processing of incongruent noun phrases occurred 3 h earlier (07:00 h) than that of congruent noun phrases (10:00 h). Our results indicate that language performance displays an internally generated circadian rhythmicity with optimal time for parsing language between 3 to 6 h after the habitual wake time, which usually corresponds to 10:00-13:00 h. These results may have important ramifications for establishing optimal times for shiftwork changes or testing linguistically impaired people.

Circadian rhythms and second language development

“…Dietrich (2006) looked at syntactic comprehension of complex sentences and found the best performance in late afternoon, which seems to be in line with Reinberg et al (1988). Rosenberg, Pusch, Dietrich, and Cajochen (2009) report on a gender congruency reaction time task in German. Participants had to indicate whether the combination of article (masculine/feminine/neuter) was congruent with the noun.…”

Ethics and Methods for Biological Rhythm Research on Animals and Human Beings

“…However, the Cosinor procedure is little known outside the field of chronobiology; thus, its application and outcome variables must be clearly explained and defined in the Methods section of articles published in hardcopy or online by Chronobiology International for those readers who are unfamiliar with this analytical procedure. Moreover, the actual time series of measurements are often rather complex due to the superimposition of rhythms of different frequencies, biological noise, and environmental "masking" (Cohen et al, 2009;Ellis et al, 2009;Jones et al, 2008;Kempinger et al, 2009;Rosenberg et al, 2009;Scherbarth & Steinlechner, 2008;Thakurdas et al, 2009;Vivanco et al, 2009). Thus, different and/or complementary statistical procedures are often required to detect or cross-validate rhythms and to test specific hypotheses.…”

Advances in the Research of Melatonin in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Literature Review and New Perspectives

“…Thus, some authors suggest that problems of sleep initiation and maintenance in children with ASD may alter their cognitive development, including memory, learning and communication [116]. Other authors suggest that language performance displays an internally generated circadian rhythmicity following the sleep-wake rhythm (the optimal time for parsing language would occur between 3 to 6 h after the habitual wake time) [117]. However, the results obtained in our first study [58] did not indicate that melatonin excretion was closely associated with degree of sleep disturbance in children with autism and using a brief sleep assessment we did not observe sleep problems in the post-pubertal subjects of our second study [59].…”