Peak Brain Times

I really should be going to bed right now, because my mom and I are waking up early to go to Seattle for a shopping weekend, but I am just not sleepy. It’s like my brain just turns ON at about 11pm. Oh so nocturnal, am I.

Anyways. The thought reminded me of a university psychology study experience. At the beginning of my intro psychology class at the University of Toronto, we all had to fill out this huge questionnaire. It was to be used by grad students when evaluating potential research subjects, as 3% of our grade was given by participating in them (they’ve since quit that practice, I think). Anyways. I got called for all of mine, instead of choosing to volunteer, as I must have turned up at the tails of some normal distributions for a bunch of traits. They never tell you what’s its about until after the experiment is over, so you don’t mess up their trials. They were fun.

One of the calls went a little something like this:

Psych Grad Student: Hello, is that Anna Gosline?
Me: Why yes, it is.
PGS: I am calling to ask for your participation in a psychology study for my thesis. Are you interested?
Me: Sure, dude.
PGS: Okay, could you come to Sidney Smith Hall Rm XXX at 8am on Wednesday morning?
Me: Urrrrr...do you have anything, like, later? (My earliest class was 10am. I awoke promptly at 9:54)
PGS: 8:15am?
Me: Urrrrr...later?
PGS: 8:30?
Me: Okay, (giving up) whatever. I’ll be there.

So I arrive, bleary eyed, totally uncaffeinated and more than a wee bit grumpy. I was placed in a tiny computer room where I was shown 10 sets of 10 vocabulary words. After each set, I had to recall as many as possible. At the end, I had to try and remember as many as I could from the whole 100. Did I mention the uncaffeinated part?

At the debrief, where they tell you what they were actually studying, as opposed to the sometimes misleading directions they give you at the start, the grad student revealed to me that she was studying how people’s “peak” time of the day changes with age. At which point I immediately recalled that on my questionnaire I had filled out: I am a night owl! My peak time of day is about 2am! I love to stay up late! Getting up before noon is hell!

Essentially, this chic had ripped me out of bed at my weakest moment on purpose to see how badly my memory would suck. Add some constantly dripping water on my forehead and I think you could almost call that torture.