From How come I wake up just before the alarm goes off?, Cecil missed another possibility (that still works in this day and age of digital alarm clocks): that when the alarm goes off, you’re already in a state of being almost-awake, where your brain just isn’t recording short-term memories into the long-term. The alarm wakes you up the rest of the way, and so the short-term memories leading up to the alarm going off end up being recorded as well.
Of course, nowadays we know a lot more about how the hippocampus works than we did back in 1985, especially with a lot of great case studies about anterograde amnesia (which is portrayed fictionally in the 2000 film Memento among others).
I am generally a light sleeper. Not only do I “wake” before the alarm rings, things i hear and experience inculcate themselves into my dreams. And anything I dream before i wake tend to be vivid for only a few minutes past waking up.
That doesn’t account for the folks who wake up, roll over, look at the time, see that it’s 2 minutes until their alarm is due to go off, and reach over and turn off their alarm so they don’t have to hear the jarring sound. I believe that is the situation that Cecil was mostly addressing.
I wake up with the clock showing one minute before the alarm is set. This happens at least 3 or 4 times a week. Often I’ll get up and sit at my desk and turn on the computer just in time for the alarm (on my cell phone, which is in the charger on my desk) to go off.
My wake up time varies…6:00, 7:00 or 8:00 depending on what day of the week it is, or how much I have to do that morning.
It happens regardless of what time I have it set to go off, although I always set the alarm for an even hour, and the time I always see is x:59.
No i dont buy some of those answers, i am currently unemployed at the moment (hence why iam on here at 3.30 in the morning) so i dont have any set times i just wake up all different times, usually 12 in the afternoon. Anyway when i have to go somewhere important and i have to set an alarm for 8 in the morning i still wake up just before the alarm even though i went to sleep at 5 in the morning so ive only had 3 hours kip but i still wake up before my alarm. And my alarms on the mobile phone it dont make no sounds 10 minutes before. And it aint my body clock because i never wake up at quarter to 8. Its gotta be something to do with your unconscious mind knowing when your hours are up.
10 years ago I assumed that there was a mechanical noise that my sleeping mind ‘heard’ that caused me to wake before the alarm because when I was a kid, my old clock radio definitely did make a clicking noise before it went off. However, no I use my iPhone or Blackberry and neither one make any noise before they go off. Also, I change my waking time depending on what I will be doing the next day due to a variable work schedule. I think that a better explanation is that when I set my alarm the evening before (or wake on the same schedule several days in a row), my subconscious ‘sets an alarm’ that has do do with my natural circadian rhythm or other timed biochemical events that aren’t understood yet.
This semi-waking period is the best time to do “Lucid dreaming” (google that term). You are conscious enough to know you have a set amount of minutes left to ‘finish’ a dream before the alarm sounds. Why not try to shape it the way you want it to be? If you put your mind to it, you can influence your dreams enough to confront silly fears and put an end to them - like the fear of falling or some other insecurity/performance thing. It might take a few attempts - if you ever wake up after sensing you’re falling, will yourself to fall the whole way to see whats at the bottom (large pillows, in my case). Turned out there was nothing to be afraid of down there.
Whatever the fear is of, the worst never materializes, so its safe to be carefree about falling or monsters chasing you, etc. Monsters (or bullies, etc) now know its pointless to chase me and the regular falling nightmares (or having no control, etc) are a distant memory. You can use this attitude to improve your reality too.
My FWIW theory: Consciousness lags behind reality. Something between a half second to 2 seconds are the common numbers I’ve seen. (One experiment even claimed a 10 second lag.)
So the alarm goes off, you wake up, you don’t realize why you’ve woken up and then finally the conscious “hears” the alarm.
(And yes, the conscious part of the mind really does lag. It’s more of an observer than most people feel comfortable contemplating.)
I wonder if this phenomenon of waking up before the alarm goes off is just an extreme form of confirmation bias?
That is, if you’re half-awake and notice that it’s not time for the alarm to go off yet, you go back to sleep. But if you’re half-awake and notice that it’s almost time for the alarm to go off, you wake up and say “Huh, that’s odd; I woke up before the alarm!”
Powers &8^]
For whatever reason, I’ve gotten used to setting my alarm to go off an hour and a half before my desired wake-up time, and then hitting the snooze button a bunch of times: actually, precisely 10 times, since it is a 9-minute snooze.
The thing is, I certainly don’t remember pushing the button that many times; generally once, at most.
So I wonder if some people aren’t going through a minor variation on what the OP said: they may well wake partly up, peek at the clock (deciding it’s not yet time to get up), fall back asleep, and then repeat every several minutes until the alarm goes off. They then only remember the last cycle for the reasons cited.
I suppose one could test this by putting the clock out of sight/reach of the sleeper, though more than once I’ve walked across the room to turn off an alarm, gone back to sleep, and forgotten the whole episode.
I agree with the comments indicating something more complex is at work here than circadian rhythms and subconscious perception of subtle clock sounds coupled to Pavlovian conditioning in avoidance of a jarring alarm. I don’t disagree with Cecil’s answer, I just think it was limited to the best explanation of the particular question asked. It gets more complicated.
There are times I’ve been without an alarm but wanted to wake at a particular time. I’ve found I can use a simple self-suggestion to wake in time for something that interests me (a movie, an eclipse, etc.), and, if my subconscious is convinced there’s a proper payoff, I wake exactly on time, even when off my normal wake/sleep pattern. I often “hear” a voice in my head say quite clearly, “Wake up, Wei Ji.”
The subconscious mind is the nine tenths of the iceberg underwater, and when motivated, appears able to set and keep clock time in some internal manner beyond subtle external cue or learned behavior.
An interesting question is whether this is maintained and constantly updated in a “time-keeping” culture like ours, or merely situational, as I just described. In other words: Does the subconscious always know what time it is at some level?
Experiments with time-deprivation have indicated that this isn’t the case. People without access to external time signals tend to develop a 25-hour schedule, which of course doesn’t align with our 24-hour planetary rotation cycle. If their subconscious was capable of keeping track of the solar time, wouldn’t they maintain a 24-hour schedule?
Powers &8^]
I think people are more attuned to the passage of time than most realise. I do not have a clock in my bedroom at all but always wake when I want. For example, if I have to wake at 6am I will wake at 6am. Also, I can go for several days without sleep and still wake at a specific time, even if it is only two or three hours after going to bed. Sometimes I will wake early and without knowing the time will lie in bed for a while before deciding to get up. When I then get up I usually find it is very close to when I did want to wake. I can not judge the actual time of day but do it by telling myself how many hours I want to sleep and I have found that it works best if I know what the time is when I go to bed. If I have no particular time I need to wake, I sleep from eight to 12 hours depending on how tired I am. Like most kids I slept in or overslept all the time but this accuracy has developed as I have aged.
Whoever said it was due to confirmation bias is right on I think. You definitely will tend to remember the times when you do wake up right before the alarm. I believe your body will get used to a regular wake-up time, so waking up prior to the alarm set for the same time every day is entirely conceivable. But for people that claim that they “always” wake up right before the alarm even when it is set to a different time every day, I find that highly dubious and if true is most likely due to them waking partially up several times prior to that and falling back to sleep when they subconsciously notice that the alarm time is still far away.
I don’t discount the ability of the body to keep time and wake you up when necessary - but I’ll bet it’s unlikely to be so accurate. Whenever I really need to wake up for a plane or something important, I always wake before the alarm - but in such cases, I generally wake many times during the night, see the clock and go back to sleep.
For those that claim to always be able to wake just minutes before the alarm, regardless of when they set it for, I suggest an experiment in which they cannot see the clock, take away external time cues (like natural lighting, and birds), and then chart the difference between when they set the alarm for and when they actually wake up and decide to get out of bed, over the course of time.