Larks Or Owls: Multiple Choice Vocabulary Test

Around half of the adult population are morning or evening types, the rest (1) _________ somewhere in the middle. There can be up to a twelve-hour difference in the time of day when the two types are at their peak. Larks tend to reach this point in the late morning, owls reach it at around 10.00 p.m.

Such contrasting times are (2) _________ more than just a difference in sleep habits. Larks and owls take (3) _________ amounts of sleep, although, as one might expect, larks tend to be “early to bed early to rise,” and owls the (4) _________ . But there is seldom more than a three-hour lag in sleeping times between the two, especially for those who go out to work.

Although the time of peak (5) _________ differs considerably from lark to owl, the circadian rhythms of other body functions, especially that of body temperature, do not differ by more than an hour or so between the two types. In both larks and owls, body temperature reaches its daily peak around 7.00-9.00 p.m. and a trough at about 4.00 a.m.

In the 1930s it was (6) _________ thought that the predisposing factor for being one or other of the types was a dominance of (7) _________ the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. In the 1940s, Professor William Sheldon, renowned for his classification of body build, turned his (8)_________ to temperaments. Active, assertive and aggressive people were claimed to be clear cut morning types, (9) _________ restrained, inhibited and withdrawn from social contact were evening types.

More recently, psychologists have considered owls to be mainly extroverts and larks introverts. One explanation for this seeming contradiction is that extroverts are more (10) _________ to enjoy socializing and nightlife, and therefore they are more likely to be owls.

But our work at Loughborough has shown that this is not the case: there is no correlation between introversion-extroversion and momingness-eveningness. One can easily find the extroverted morning type who is the life and soul of the breakfast table, and the introverted evening type who reads well into the night. There is, in fact, little by way of obvious personality differences between the two types.

(from Helen Naylor and Stuart Hagger)