The Perception of Time

[rousseau]

I did a bit of poking around today about time perception, and came across this article:

IQ and it's Relation to Time Perception

Yes it's medium, yes it's a blog post, but I found the theory interesting. It summarizes:

It appears quite possible that there is a significant relationship between an individual’s IQ and the speed at which they perceive time, relative to the population mean. Higher IQ individuals, who have higher levels of cognitive efficiency, perceive time at a relatively slower rate, whereas lower IQ individuals with lower levels of cognitive efficiency perceive a faster rate of time passage. While there seems to be no immediate social implications surrounding this theory, the consideration of a new way at looking at time, and our perception, will hopefully spark interest in the minds of those curious, leading to further investigation.

I don't hope the thread to be specifically about that article, though, rather any research or perspectives surrounding the perception of time.

I point out this article because it seems to be true of my experience. I'll leave aside foggy concepts like IQ, but I think cognitive efficiency is a good descriptor. My mind works pretty quickly, I move pretty fast, and the world feels painfully slow.

 

[southernhybrid]

If the article is factual, then I am an idiot because time flies by for me. While I won't be able to provide you with a link, at least ten years ago, Scientific American did a special issue about aging. One of the articles in the issue gave evidence that as we age, the perception of time changes drastically. We perceive time moving much more quickly when we are older than we do when we are young. I have found this to be very true in my case, and my mother and most of my former patients told me the same thing.

I remember being a child and feeling as if it took forever for time to pass, but now it moves so quickly that I sometimes feel as if my life will be over very soon. I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding why smarter people would perceive time as moving slowly. Smarter people can easily get involved in reading, thinking, discussion things with friends. I"m never bored. I don't even know what boredom looks like. Perhaps if I had a boring job when I was still working, that would be different. But, one thing is certain about working as a nurse, you might be stressed out of your mind, but you will never be bored, and the day always flies by quickly. ( well almost always )

 

[rousseau]

If the article is factual, then I am an idiot because time flies by for me. While I won't be able to provide you with a link, at least ten years ago, Scientific American did a special issue about aging. One of the articles in the issue gave evidence that as we age, the perception of time changes drastically. We perceive time moving much more quickly when we are older than we do when we are young. I have found this to be very true in my case, and my mother and most of my former patients told me the same thing.

I remember being a child and feeling as if it took forever for time to pass, but now it moves so quickly that I sometimes feel as if my life will be over very soon. I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding why smarter people would perceive time as moving slowly. Smarter people can easily get involved in reading, thinking, discussion things with friends. I"m never bored. I don't even know what boredom looks like. Perhaps if I had a boring job when I was still working, that would be different. But, one thing is certain about working as a nurse, you might be stressed out of your mind, but you will never be bored, and the day always flies by quickly. ( well almost always )

I think the idea behind the article is that the affect of cognitive efficiency would be a spectrum. If you compared opposite ends of the spectrum there would be wide variation on that variable, but most people experience time in roughly the same way. So towards your point you probably do experience time moving quickly largely because of other variables - being older.

For me - the experience of time moving quickly isn't really true. Yes, it feels quicker than when I was younger, but it doesn't feel quick. I find the article interesting because I suspect I'm a bit of a cognitive outlier. I have absolutely no idea what my IQ is, but when I was in elementary school I outpaced my peers by many orders of magnitude, and still do similar in my career today. Which I think lends itself to the cognitive efficiency argument - as the mind moves faster, time feels slower. I find it hard not to be bored and do almost everything quickly.

I've actually been thinking lately about how in some respects I find my job more enjoyable than my personal life, because there is really no limit to how productive I can be. I can be assigned work and rifle through it absolutely as fast as I want.

 

[southernhybrid]

I'm busy this morning, but I think I found something that explains my last post.


https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/why-does-time-fly-as-we-get-older/

The conversation around the watercooler these days has evolved into the annual “where has the time gone?” discussion–how quickly the neighborhood kids have become high school graduates; how our hot July beach vacations seem like they were just yesterday; and how we haven’t baked cookies or sent cards or bought gifts yet because time has just been flying by.
It’s become a common complaint–almost a joke–that time seems to whiz by faster and faster as we get older.

In the early 1960s, Wallach and Green studied this phenomenon in groups of younger (18-20 years) and older (median age 71 years) subjects through the use of metaphors. Young people were more likely to select static metaphors to describe the passage of time (such as “time is a quiet, motionless ocean”). Older folks, on the other hand, described time with swift metaphors (“time is a speeding train”). In research by Joubert (1990), young subjects, when asked, said that they expect time to pass more rapidly when they become older.
In the first study (2005) to examine the subjective passage of time across the lifespan, Marc Wittman and Sandra Lehnhoff of Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich recruited 499 participants ranging in age from 14-94. Each subject filled out a series of questionnaires. The first part included questions on a Likert-type scale (ratings from -2 to +2) with answers ranging from time passing “very slowly” to “very fast.” The second part consisted of statements and metaphors about the passage of time, and subjects were asked to rate each sentence from 0 (“strong rejection”) to 4 (strong approval”).
Unexpectedly, Wittman and Lehnhoff found a weak association between age and the individuals’ perception of time; in other words, everybody, regardless of age, thought that time was passing quickly. The question, “How fast did the last 10 years pass for you?” yielded a tendency for the perception of the speed of time (in the last decade, anyway) to increase with age; this pattern peaked at age 50, however, and remained steady until the mid-90s. Questions regarding smaller intervals of time (“How fast did the last hour/week/month pass?”) did not change with age.

Anyway, I doubt we have enough evidence to make any substantial claims about how different categories of people perceive the passing of time, but there does seem to be some connection to aging and the perception of time. What I posted is just a blog piece, but it's probably similar to what I read about 10 or more years ago. Of course, since time flies by so quickly for me, 10 years ago, sometimes seems like yesterday.

Maybe really smart people tend to have the most boring jobs and that's why their perception of time is different.

 

[southernhybrid]

If the article is factual, then I am an idiot because time flies by for me. While I won't be able to provide you with a link, at least ten years ago, Scientific American did a special issue about aging. One of the articles in the issue gave evidence that as we age, the perception of time changes drastically. We perceive time moving much more quickly when we are older than we do when we are young. I have found this to be very true in my case, and my mother and most of my former patients told me the same thing.

I remember being a child and feeling as if it took forever for time to pass, but now it moves so quickly that I sometimes feel as if my life will be over very soon. I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding why smarter people would perceive time as moving slowly. Smarter people can easily get involved in reading, thinking, discussion things with friends. I"m never bored. I don't even know what boredom looks like. Perhaps if I had a boring job when I was still working, that would be different. But, one thing is certain about working as a nurse, you might be stressed out of your mind, but you will never be bored, and the day always flies by quickly. ( well almost always )

I think the idea behind the article is that the affect of cognitive efficiency would be a spectrum. If you compared opposite ends of the spectrum there would be wide variation on that variable, but most people experience time in roughly the same way. So towards your point you probably do experience time moving quickly largely because of other variables - being older.

For me - the experience of time moving quickly isn't really true. Yes, it feels quicker than when I was younger, but it doesn't feel quick. I find the article interesting because I suspect I'm a bit of a cognitive outlier. I have absolutely no idea what my IQ is, but when I was in elementary school I outpaced my peers by many orders of magnitude, and still do similar in my career today. Which I think lends itself to the cognitive efficiency argument - as the mind moves faster, time feels slower. I find it hard not to be bored and do almost everything quickly.

I've actually been thinking lately about how in some respects I find my job more enjoyable than my personal life, because there is really no limit to how productive I can be. I can be assigned work and rifle through it absolutely as fast as I want.

That's interesting. Despite my problem with mechanical and technical things, I also always outpaced my peers when I was in elementary school. When I worked as a nurse, especially in the clinic or QA settings, I was always far more productive than most of my coworkers. I always enjoyed helping my team get their work done, although oddly enough, a few of them seemed to deeply resent that I could work much faster than they could. I can't say that I'm that fast at getting things done now that I'm in my 70s, but some of that is due to the physical limitations that come with chronic arthritic pain.

Now that I can pretty much do whatever I want during the day, I'm never bored, although, right now I should be vacuuming the room that I'm sitting in, instead of posting here.

I think my son might be a little bit like you. He's also a computer programmer/developer and he's frequently told me that he gets his work done much faster than his coworkers, leaving him a bit bored while waiting for a new assignment. Unlike you, he always had problems learning in school until he attended college. Then he graduated with honors. Once he had the opportunity to become engrossed in computer science, nothing could stop him. I've never asked him if he perceives time going quickly or slowly.

 

[DBT]

Perhaps an awareness of rate of change is our perception of time. An unconscious state perceives neither change or time. Whenever we are intensely focused on something our perception of time is altered accordingly. And memory, we compare past events. Our yesterdays seemed to have passed rapidly because we are left with only snatches of memory.

 

[Treedbear]

Time seems to pass more slowly with respect to some nominal duration of reference when we have more distinct or detailed memories of what occurred than is usual. I saw an interview with a young guy who was in an accident where he was wingsuit flying. He'd actually video recorded what he saw with a helmet camera as he jumped off a cliff and went soaring down into a ravine. As he passed a rock outcrop going maybe 70 mph he snagged the jagged tip of a boulder and crashed. He experienced severe injuries. He said the whole thing seemed to occur in slow motion. The take-away is that when you're having really intense experiences you need a higher level of consciousness in order to respond quickly. Hence the thrill that comes from reckless behavior. (So why does reckless sound just like wreckless, anyway???) Anyway, whether heightened conscious awareness is one's natural state or whether it's a transitory experience, the more detailed the memories one retains of an experience the slower it would seem to have passed. It's similar to the experience of looking out the window while riding in a train. The slower the train goes the more details you get to notice about the scenery. The question that must be asked is, relative to what?

 

[fromderinside]

I can think of no situation where time is more precious than that of multidimensional armed combat in ground and air situations. It is a primary factor in establishing one's management and execution of situation awareness and task workload. Most of us can manage three to five different simultaneous tasks in normal, non-pressure conditions when we are well rested prior to executing them.

As you can see variables jump exponentially even for the simplest multiple task situations. Add pressure and criticality, two multidimensional motive factors and awareness and workload become complex beyond normal capacities to function. Yet, clearly some persons, with training, can survive, even thrive in these environments.

Attempts to categorize by native -ilities are just useless. Serious training and management of number and order of situation definitions and workload dimensions are necessary.

What I'm suggesting is that we scale back time perception variables to only those necessary for survival. If adding a particular variable adds nothing to the probability one can manage situations and effort leave it out no matter how necessary you apriori judge it is important. Drifting off into consciousness analysis and other presumptive analyses provides no return.

Let us characterize a task or system of tasks and then begin simulations adding and detracting variables as necessary for one to actually succeed performing the cluster of tasks. In military and human engineering we've been at this sort of thing for about 80 years now. Sadly we still now far to little to be of any real value in supplying people the tools they need to reliable perform the most critical task scenarios.

There may be, probably are, biological clocks we reference. But what we do mostly is adjust to the situation by reconfiguring abilities and requirement until we succeed in achieving some level of competence.

 

[Treedbear]

I can think of no situation where time is more precious than that of multidimensional armed combat in ground and air situations. It is a primary factor in establishing one's management and execution of situation awareness and task workload. Most of us can manage three to five different simultaneous tasks in normal, non-pressure conditions when we are well rested prior to executing them.

As you can see variables jump exponentially even for the simplest multiple task situations. Add pressure and criticality, two multidimensional motive factors and awareness and workload become complex beyond normal capacities to function. Yet, clearly some persons, with training, can survive, even thrive in these environments.

Attempts to categorize by native -ilities are just useless. Serious training and management of number and order of situation definitions and workload dimensions are necessary.

What I'm suggesting is that we scale back time perception variables to only those necessary for survival. If adding a particular variable adds nothing to the probability one can manage situations and effort leave it out no matter how necessary you apriori judge it is important. Drifting off into consciousness analysis and other presumptive analyses provides no return.

Let us characterize a task or system of tasks and then begin simulations adding and detracting variables as necessary for one to actually succeed performing the cluster of tasks. In military and human engineering we've been at this sort of thing for about 80 years now. Sadly we still now far to little to be of any real value in supplying people the tools they need to reliable perform the most critical task scenarios.

Hey, I'm not getting paid to do this.

There may be, probably are, biological clocks we reference. But what we do mostly is adjust to the situation by reconfiguring abilities and requirement until we succeed in achieving some level of competence.

I thought that's what I said.

 

[Swammerdami]

Martin Amis' Time's Arrow (his best book IMO) offers a weird look at time's speed.

I remember being a child and feeling as if it took forever for time to pass, but now it moves so quickly that I sometimes feel as if my life will be over very soon.

This sums up my experience. High school lasted a very long time. Before that, my ten-day summer outings at YMCA camp lasted a huge time. Now time races against me.

I've a friend even older than me who may not suffer from this as badly. We had a conversation like
ME: So-and-so died recently.
HIM: But that was a few YEARS ago.
ME: Isn't that what I said?

 

[fromderinside]

Important point Swammerdami​. Communicating time is a perilous venture.

 

[rousseau]

Perhaps an awareness of rate of change is our perception of time. An unconscious state perceives neither change or time. Whenever we are intensely focused on something our perception of time is altered accordingly. And memory, we compare past events. Our yesterdays seemed to have passed rapidly because we are left with only snatches of memory.

..time flies when you're having fun..?

When there is nothing engaging (to focus on) in our immediate environment we become more aware of the passage of time, rather than losing ourselves in some activity. This could be tied into the OP concept of cognitive efficiency. When someone is able to receive the payback of engaging activities more quickly, they lose focus and become more aware of time passing - while others are out there having fun.

Maybe it's more - time moves more slowly when you are aware of it - it's not actually slower, but the experience feels more painful - you're waiting for the next engaging activity to lose yourself in. When we're enjoying an activity the passage of time is no longer a concern or object of our attention - we don't notice it passing.

My experience as a child is different - yes time moved more slowly at times - but in retrospect the sum total of 20 years felt pretty quick. Whereas now imagining my life from 34 to 50 feels like an eternity.

 

[fromderinside]

Do we all understand why Darwin didn't continue stories heard while on his grandfather's knee that cutting off tails reduces their length over generations? Enough with "I heard", "I feel", "some say"? That's even worse than Wundt introspecting. And writing down what someone sez not to be believed either.

 

[rousseau]

Do we all understand why Darwin didn't continue stories heard while on his grandfather's knee that cutting off tails reduces their length over generations? Enough with "I heard", "I feel", "some say"? That's even worse than Wundt introspecting. And writing down what someone sez not to be believed either.

It's too bad I'm not sure exactly what or who you're addressing because I'm actually interested in this subject. My post is a little fuzzy sure, but a phrase like '...times flies' having such an enormous place in our lexicon must point to something.

Unfortunately a 6 month old stops me from diving into actual academic research too deeply, but my explanation does seem reasonable. Perhaps it's not as much a question of our biological clock, as much as it's our visceral relationship with the passage of time. If we're having fun for 100% of our lives we just don't notice time passing, nor care how quickly it passes. On the converse if we're not having fun we have to wait for time to pass.

But yea I imagine there's much more to it.

 

[rousseau]

Here is a real, bona-fide article:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3250951?seq=1

Time Flies When You're Having Fun: Cognitive Absorption and Beliefs about Information Technology Usage

Abstract

Extant explanations of why users behave in particular ways toward information technologies have tended to focus predominantly on instrumental beliefs as drivers of individual usage intentions. Prior work in individual psychology, however, suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories. In this paper, we describe a multidimensional construct labeled cognitive absorption and defined as a state of deep involvement with software. Cognitive absorption, theorized as being exhibited through the five dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity, is posited to be a proximal antecedent of two important beliefs about technology use: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. In addition, we propose that the individual traits of playfulness and personal innovativeness are important determinants of cognitive absorption. Based on the conceptual definition of this construct, operational measures for each dimension are developed. Using the World Wide Web as the target technology, scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure. Structural equation analysis provides evidence for the theorized nomological net of cognitive absorption. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.

 

[rousseau]

And another

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6494.00134

Time Flies: Investigating the Connection Between Intrinsic Motivation and the Experience of Time

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between intrinsic motivation and the subjective experience of time passing. The Work Preference Inventory, which measures trait intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, was administered to 75 undergraduate participants. Measures of time awareness, time estimation, checking of time, and perceived speed of time were collected using the experience sampling method. Participants carried electronic schedulers for five days and completed questionnaires each time the scheduler sounded (eight times per day). Results showed that higher intrinsic motivation was associated with checking and thinking about time less often, a subjective experience of time passing more quickly, and more of a tendency to lose track of time. The experience of time awareness was accompanied by a subjective sense of time moving slowly, a tendency to overestimate the time, and a more negative affective experience. These findings suggest that time perception is an important dimension of motivational experience.

 

[Treedbear]

Here is a real, bona-fide article:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3250951?seq=1

Time Flies When You're Having Fun: Cognitive Absorption and Beliefs about Information Technology Usage

Abstract

Extant explanations of why users behave in particular ways toward information technologies have tended to focus predominantly on instrumental beliefs as drivers of individual usage intentions. Prior work in individual psychology, however, suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories. In this paper, we describe a multidimensional construct labeled cognitive absorption and defined as a state of deep involvement with software. Cognitive absorption, theorized as being exhibited through the five dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity, is posited to be a proximal antecedent of two important beliefs about technology use: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. In addition, we propose that the individual traits of playfulness and personal innovativeness are important determinants of cognitive absorption. Based on the conceptual definition of this construct, operational measures for each dimension are developed. Using the World Wide Web as the target technology, scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure. Structural equation analysis provides evidence for the theorized nomological net of cognitive absorption. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.

"suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories."

"scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure."

Huh? Please translate.

 

[rousseau]

Here is a real, bona-fide article:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3250951?seq=1

Time Flies When You're Having Fun: Cognitive Absorption and Beliefs about Information Technology Usage

Abstract

Extant explanations of why users behave in particular ways toward information technologies have tended to focus predominantly on instrumental beliefs as drivers of individual usage intentions. Prior work in individual psychology, however, suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories. In this paper, we describe a multidimensional construct labeled cognitive absorption and defined as a state of deep involvement with software. Cognitive absorption, theorized as being exhibited through the five dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity, is posited to be a proximal antecedent of two important beliefs about technology use: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. In addition, we propose that the individual traits of playfulness and personal innovativeness are important determinants of cognitive absorption. Based on the conceptual definition of this construct, operational measures for each dimension are developed. Using the World Wide Web as the target technology, scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure. Structural equation analysis provides evidence for the theorized nomological net of cognitive absorption. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.

"suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories."

"scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure."

Huh? Please translate.

I think it means that the thing they did to test the variables behind cognitive absorption worked.

 

[rousseau]

"suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories."

"scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure."

Huh? Please translate.

I think it means that the thing they did to test the variables behind cognitive absorption worked.

Oh I forgot about this part of your post:

"suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories."

The article itself is talking about the experience software makers should target to encourage use of their products. In reference to this thread I think the idea is that when someone experiences temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, curiosity, playfulness they are having fun, and become less aware of time.

 

[Treedbear]

"suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories."

"scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure."

Huh? Please translate.

I think it means that the thing they did to test the variables behind cognitive absorption worked.

Oh I forgot about this part of your post:

"suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories."

The article itself is talking about the experience software makers should target to encourage use of their products. In reference to this thread I think the idea is that when someone experiences temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, curiosity, playfulness they are having fun, and become less aware of time.

It still sounds like word salad to me.

...
My experience as a child is different - yes time moved more slowly at times - but in retrospect the sum total of 20 years felt pretty quick. Whereas now imagining my life from 34 to 50 feels like an eternity.

When I was 20 I was able to reason (optimistically) that I had 3 or 4 more lifetimes to live. When I was 40 it was just one or one and a half. Now it's just half a lifetime with some luck and shrinking rapidly.

I was watching an interview on CSPAN yesterday with neuroscientist and researcher David Eagleman talking about his new book "Livewired". His theories seem to have changed a bit since he made a TV series about the brain several years ago. You should look for it because he proposes an interesting purpose for dreams in relation to the "competitive" nature of brain processes. Actually here's the link to the talk.

Basically the more plastic and reconfigurable a brain is (among the various species) the more it needs to dream in order to defend its ability to process visual information. Otherwise that region would be expropriated during the night, when visual stimulation is mostly absent, by auditory or tactile processes. Regularly stimulating this region with visual information (only about 5% of which is ever directly received from the eyes) maintains the visual mapping of the region.

But another idea he presents is that as we age and acquire more and more experience we also achieve more of an understanding of out environment. Our model of the world becomes more complete and as it does so there is simply less need to remember recent experiences because older, more established ones have become sufficient. It's not a defect so much as the natural result of what the brain has been doing for a lifetime. Not that inactivity is a good thing. Eagleman stresses that continuing to actively seek mental challenges is crucial to the brain's health.