Sense of time

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The sense of time can refer either to the perception of relatively short periods of time, or the perception of times which are a significant fraction of a person's lifetime.

When asked to place the time of a past event, people have a systematic tendency to recall that recent events occurred farther back in time (backward telescoping) and distant events occurred more recently (forward telescoping) than is actually the case.[1]

A contemporary quartz watch

Experiments have shown rats successfully estimating intervals of time.[2][3]

Contents

[edit] Theory

William Friedman contrasted two theories for a sense of time[4]:

  • The strength model of time memory. Posits such a thing as a memory trace that persists over time, where one could judge the age of a memory (and therefore how long ago the event remembered occurred) from the strength of the trace. The longer ago the event, the weaker the trace.

Unfortunately, the trace model comes into conflict with a very familiar feature of our experience: that some memories of recent events may fade more quickly than memories of more distant events.

  • The inference model suggests the time of an event is not simply read off from some aspect of the memory of it, but is inferred from information about relations between the event in question and other events whose date or time is known.

[edit] Short-term

Although the sense of time is not associated with a specific sensory system, the work of psychologists and neuroscientists indicates that human brains do have a system governing the perception of time.[5] This is a highly distributed system including the cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia as its components. One particular component, the suprachiasmatic nuclei, is responsible for the circadian (or daily) rhythm, while other cell clusters appear to be capable of shorter-range (ultradian) timekeeping. The sense of time is impaired in some people with neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and attention deficit disorder.

Human perception of duration is subjective and variable. For example, time may appear to slow or drag as one eagerly anticipates the arrival of a specific event. A school day may seem endless for a student who is waiting for the bell indicating that school is finished for the day. The traditional proverb describing this effect is "a watched pot never boils".[6][7]

Psychoactive drugs can also impair the perception of time. Stimulants can lead both humans and rats to overestimate time intervals[8][9] while depressants can have the opposite effect.[10] The level of activity in the brain of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and adrenaline may be the reason for this. Errors in estimated time intervals might be caused by varying levels of neurotransmitters in the brain.[11]

People who have been hypnotized underestimate the duration of their trance.[12]

In an experiment comparing a group of subjects aged between 19 and 24 and a group between 60 and 80 asked to estimate when they thought 3 minutes had passed, it was found that the younger group's estimate was on average 3 minutes and 3 seconds, while the older group averaged 3 minutes and 40 seconds[13]; time seemed to pass more quickly for the older group.

[edit] Specious present

The specious present is the time duration wherein one's perceptions are considered to be in the present. The term specious present was first introduced by the psychologist E.R. Clay, and developed by William James.[14] The experienced present is ‘specious’ in that, unlike the objective present, it is an interval and not a durationless instant.

[edit] Long-term

It is a known phenomenon that long periods of time appear to pass faster as people grow older. The time from a child's eighth birthday to the ninth seems an eternity; the time from the sixty-eighth to the sixty-ninth seems to pass in a flash.[15]

Stephen Hawking also suggests that the perception of time is a function of age, according to the ratio unit of time to time lived.[citation needed] For example, one hour to a six-month-old person would be approximately 1:4368, while one hour to a 40-year-old would be 1:349,440. Therefore an hour appears much longer to a young child than to an adult, even though the measure of time is the same.

[edit] Alterations

A form of temporal illusion verifiable by experiment is the kappa effect,[16] whereby time intervals between visual events are perceived as relatively longer or shorter depending on the relative spatial positions of the events. In other words: the perception of temporal intervals appears to be directly affected, in these cases, by the perception of spatial intervals.

[edit] Special relativity

This common experience was used to familiarize the general public to the ideas presented by Einstein's theory of relativity in a 1930 cartoon by Sidney "George" Strube:[17][18]

Man: Well, it's like this,—supposing I were to sit next to a pretty girl for half an hour it would seem like half a minute,—
Einstein: Braffo! You haf zee ideah! [sic]
Man: But if I were to sit on a hot stove for two seconds then it would seem like two hours.

[edit] Psychoactive substances

Altered states of consciousness are sometimes characterized by a different estimation of time. Some psychoactive substances – such as entheogens – may also dramatically alter a person's temporal judgement. When viewed under the influence of such substances as LSD, psychedelic mushrooms, and peyote, a clock may appear to be a strange reference point and a useless tool for measuring the passage of events as it does not correlate with the user's experience. At higher doses, time may appear to slow down, stop, speed up, go backwards and even seem out of sequence.[citation needed]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ It Seems Like Only Yesterday: The Nature and Consequences of Telescoping Errors in Marketing Research. Journal of Consumer Psychology. http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=KgPbgnYGLQyyHQtdPQbVMGHm5wp3tr94mQLkBF4hTvYJ09dlJx5N!-1941634607!-2081211395?docId=77055094. 
  2. ^ Mackintosh, N. J.. Animal Learning and Cognition. ISBN 9780121619534. 
  3. ^ Performance of Decorticated Rats on Fixed Interval and Fixed Time Schedules. European Journal of Neuroscience. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119443633/abstract. 
  4. ^ "The Experience and Perception of Time". http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-experience. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 
  5. ^ "Brain Areas Critical To Human Time Sense Identified". UniSci - Daily University Science News. 2001-02-27. http://www.unisci.com/stories/20011/0227013.htm. 
  6. ^ G Underwood, RA Swain (1973), "Selectivity of attention and the perception of duration", Perception 2: 101, doi:10.1068/p020101 
  7. ^ SW Brown, DA Stubbs (1992), "Attention and interference in prospective and retrospective timing", Perception 
  8. ^ Wittmann, M.; Leland DS, Churan J, Paulus MP. (8 October 2007). "Impaired time perception and motor timing in stimulant-dependent subjects" (online abstract). Drug Alcohol Depend. 90 (2-3): 183–92. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2007.03.005. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17434690. 
  9. ^ Cheng, Ruey-Kuang; Macdonald, Christopher J.; Meck, Warren H. (2006). "Differential effects of cocaine and ketamine on time estimation : Implications for neurobiological models of interval timing" (online abstract). Pharmacology, biochemistry and behavior 85 (1): 114–122. doi:10.1016/j.pbb.2006.07.019. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18303059. 
  10. ^ Tinklenberg, Jared R.; Walton T. Roth1; Bert S. Kopell (January 1976). "Marijuana and ethanol: Differential effects on time perception, heart rate, and subjective response". Psychopharmacology 49 (3): 275–279. doi:10.1007/BF00426830. http://www.springerlink.com/content/q1227453r481x439/. 
  11. ^ Arzy, Shahar; Istvan Molnar-Szakacs; Olaf Blanke (2008-06-18). "Self in Time: Imagined Self-Location Influences Neural Activity Related to Mental Time Travel" (Abstract). The Journal of Neuroscience 28 (25): 6502–6507. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5712-07.2008. http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/25/6502. Retrieved 2008-08-25. 
  12. ^ Bowers, Kenneth (January 1979), "Hypnosis and the perception of time", International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis) 27 (1): 29–41, doi:10.1080/00207147908407540, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a790232921~db=all 
  13. ^ New Scientist magazine: Why time flies in old age
  14. ^ Andersen, Holly; Rick Grush (pending) (PDF). A brief history of time-consciousness: historical precursors to James and Husserl. Journal of the History of Philosophy. http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/bhtc/Andersen&Grush.pdf. Retrieved 2008-02-02. 
  15. ^ Robert, Adler. "Look how time flies . . .". http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16422180.900-look-how-time-flies. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 
  16. ^ Wada Y, Masuda T, Noguchi K, 2005, "Temporal illusion called 'kappa effect' in event perception" Perception 34 ECVP Abstract Supplement
  17. ^ Priestley, J. B. (1964). Man and Time. New York: Crescent Books. pp. 96. 
  18. ^ Sunrise (2008). "Unified Field Theory: A new interpretation" (PDF). Chapter 2—The Development of the Unified Field Theory, pg. 31. Sunrise Information Services. http://www.sunrisepage.com/uft/history.pdf. 

[edit] External links

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