“A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science has found our concept of time is distorted, and we consistently underestimate how much time has passed since events in the past, condensing the time.
The researchers, led by Dr. Gal Zauberman, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, wondered why events that occurred at about the same time can feel more or less distant. Previous research had suggested that characteristics pertaining to the event itself could influence the time estimate, so Zauberman and his team decided to focus on the characteristics of the time interval following the event to see how they influenced the perception of time.
They tested university students to find out how accurately they could estimate when news events had occurred. Events included the appointment of US Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Britney Spears shaving her head. They found the students underestimated the time passed since the events by, on average, three months, and that the estimate depended on the extent of memories of related events that have occurred since. The more details students had of related events in the interval, the longer ago the event seemed to have occurred. Dr Zauberman said it seems that people have trouble understanding the passage of time, and we need to “latch onto something we do understand” in order to comprehend it.
This may explain, for example, why children we rarely see seem to grow up faster than those we see every day — because there are fewer intervening memories — and so the time seems condensed. It may also explain why goals that are not acted upon seem to have been made a short time ago, while those that were acted upon seem to have been made in the more distant past.”
Read more at Physorg
Extraneous variables not considered include channel 4 repeating each ‘Big Fat Quiz of the Year’ on consecutive days, throwing at least my LTM all out of wack. Which year was it that Russel Brand said something outrageous again?
My experience of the distortion of time-perception is that the more you think about the event, the longer ago it seems. So it’s not so much intervening memories in general as it is how much you look back on those particular memories. I always thought that the memory got kind of used up when you thought about it repeatedly because the neurons relating to that memory get rewired and distorted each time you used them. Maybe that’s just an extension of the Physorg info.
I thought it was just me! I can never remember when things happened, which is one of the reasons I keep a diary!
I used to keep a diary then my brothers friend took it and posted some pages from different areas in England. He was a freak though his mum was my browny owl. Getting on at 31 and others think my lack of memory is like an attitude problem as I seem not to care.
I’m finding the older I’m getting that time seems to be speeding up and the years getting shorter & shorter. And yet when I was a child a year seemed an absolute eternity. But now? I can still remember leaving school in ’89 as if it was yesterday, and yet when I was growing up in the 70′s, that seems almost another lifetime now.
LC x
that doesn’t surprise me. i find morning hours go quicker than afternoon hours. some people have quite an obsession about time and seem to think they are more intelligent if they can get a time scale right and yet it’s hardly ever relevant.
I usually wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off most mornings, which is handy if the batteries get low.
But when it comes to remembering how long ago events happened, (days, months, years) my brain doesn’t want to play
Is memory state dependent.? depending what mood your in, depends on how good you remember something. so thinking of events in time thats passed, does it depend on if it was a good event or bad. or how it made you feel. what you assocaite with the event. or down to is it some people just remember better then some, its that simple.
That’s not really a mystery to most who have been given some thought those these things, but it keeps being kinda intriguing as long as you dont give it thought … We all know what to do to speed up time or make it go slower (ehehehe …) .. By slowing down you may get behind time … or in tune with it .. or get out of touch with it completely … (well, that might be the same as being behind time .. depends if you had a mission probably or were just floating ..).
I’m sort of confused of some missing hours last friday evening .. but that could also be due to a not so good working mind of someone else in this case .. a not so good working clock … or me being in another time frame … (the latter seems to be a bit the case .. I hope I did not wander around … and also .. what have I been doing with that time, where was I).
When I was a child a year seemed so much longer than it does now that I’m an adult. But then it would, wouldn’t it? At 4 years old a year was a quarter of my whole life, now it is a significantly smaller proportion of my whole life. Each year that passes appears to go quicker and quicker, as we get older, and as such the years merge in our memories.