Circadian Modulation of Semantic Exploration in Social Media Language

Human cognition exhibits strong circadian modulation, yet its influence on high-dimensional semantic behavior remains poorly understood. Using large-scale Reddit data, we quantify time-of-day variation in language use by embedding text into a pretrained transformer model and measuring semantic entropy as an index of linguistic exploration-exploitation, for which we show a robust circadian rhythmicity that could be entrained by seasonal light cues. Distinguishing between local and global semantic entropy reveals a systematic temporal dissociation: local semantic exploration peaks in the morning, reflecting broader exploration of semantic space, whereas global semantic diversity peaks later in the day as submissions accumulate around already established topics, consistent with "rich-get-richer" dynamics. These patterns are not explained by sentiment or affective valence, indicating that semantic exploration captures a cognitive dimension distinct from mood. The observed temporal structure aligns with known diurnal patterns in neuromodulatory systems, suggesting that biological circadian rhythms extend to the semantic domain.