Psychology of Time Perception

Psychology of Time: Current Trends

• The course is titled "Psychology of Time: Current Trends" and corresponds to a course code 6273, "Structure and Process of the Cognitive System: The case of Problem Solving."
• Various scientific approaches investigate the complex concept of time. Common thought associates time with physical measures like clocks, as an objective, measurable magnitude.
• Psychological time, a notion used and recognized but difficult to define, is approached in relation to human cognitive behaviour. It encompasses temporal reasoning and the perception of experienced events' durations.
• Psychological time has three major aspects: succession, duration, and temporal perspective.

The Concept of Time

• Scientific approaches aim to investigate the complicated idea of time.
• Common thinking links time to physics, considering it an objective magnitude precisely measurable using tools.
• The concept of time is fundamental, essential, and universal to all human lives and actions.

The Concept of Psychological Time

• Time is a common idea that is generally understood but difficult to define
• Psychology examines time in relation to human cognitive processes, considering temporal reasoning or how we perceive durations.
• Psychological time involves understanding, construction, and perception of events in terms of succession (order) and duration (length).
• There are three main elements in understanding psychological time: succession (order), duration (length), and temporal perspective (overall sense of time).
• Time is a cognitive concept and crucial for our understanding of the world.

Cognitive Development of Time

• First research on child time-conception was Piaget's 1946 work "Le développement de la notion du temps chez l'enfant" (The Child's Conception of Time, 1927/1969).

Kinematic Time

• Kinematic time is a way of thinking about time related to perception in terms of distance and velocity.
• It connects with space knowledge through velocity knowledge.

Non-Kinematic Time

• Non-Kinematic time deals with problem-solving, focusing on duration and succession (order of events).
• This involves temporal reasoning, like determining if something lasted longer or shorter in relation to others.

Children's Conception of Time

• Children's understanding of time develops from kinematic concepts (relationship with space) to non-kinematic time concepts (duration, succession). This development goes from simple decidable questions to more complex undecidable ones.

Perception and Estimation of Duration

• Humans can perceive events lasting more than a few milliseconds.
• Two events are perceived as distinct if they are separated by a sufficient temporal gap; otherwise, they appear as one continuous event.
• Perception of duration depends on the sensory system, with visual stimuli requiring longer intervals to be perceived differently (110-130 milliseconds). Auditory stimuli require much shorter intervals (10-50 milliseconds with a frequency of 500Hz).
• We perceive longer intervals (1.5 seconds or more) as disconnected sonic events.

Estimation of Duration

• Vierordt's Law describes our tendency to overestimate short durations and underestimate long ones.
• Roy's 2008 study confirmed this law with experiments using 1-15 minute intervals.

Similar Results in Time Tasks

• Similar patterns are found in various time-related tasks, such as time production.
• The difference between short and long time intervals (2-10 minutes) varies depending on the task and context.

Psychological Time Theories

• Psychological time theories are positioned between biological and cognitive extremes, representing the interplay between internal biological clocks and mental processes.
• Biological models suggest time perception depends on brain mechanisms, like internal clocks, allowing for measuring and judging durations.
• Cognitive models propose time perception results from information processing, primarily using memory and attention.
• Other models attempt to reconcile these theories, like one developed by Jean-Marie Guyau, who posited time as acquired mental representations, allowing storage and memory of past events.

Educational Implications of Time Concepts

• Students' use of representations influences their competency, especially in education.
• A developmental model exists where children's time understanding starts with distance notions and progressively develops to the broader concept of time. It is evident that for children, time is closely related to space.
• Educational approaches should consider the role of representations, including natural, visual, and verbal methods, to improve learning.
• Learning through "true or false" questions versus open-ended questions has educational implications. Better learning occurs for children when they learn the relationship between time and space by visually representing it.
• Multimedia aids can improve learning of time concepts substantially, especially when they provide visual-video representations.

Time and Emotion

• Time perception is influenced by emotions experienced during events or when imagining events; emotional valence can either speed or slow time perception .
• Time seems to perceive quicker when experiencing positive emotions and the contrary with negative emotions.
• Emotions affect event perception, especially during emotional-related activities like reading, viewing, or listening to music.
• Emotions greatly influence time perception, either speeding it up or slowing it down depending on the valence of the emotional content of the associated information.

Psychological Time Theories

• Experiential time is concerned with how we personally experience the passage of time, which may differ from objective, measured time.
• This often is referred to as subjective time, where time is contracted or expanded.
• This also considers that subjective time is influenced or "distorted" by various factors, such as emotions, moods, context, and even our personality.
• Psychological time is a product of the interaction of experiential and logical time, influenced by our personal experiences and cognitive processes, not only by objective measurement on a clock.

Cognitive Psychology and Time

• Cognitive psychology's focus on time is through experience, particularly with real-life events and duration estimations.
• The involved cognitive processes include both attention and memory, as well as the more abstract ideas and emotions related to events.
• Research on things like films demonstrates that emotional factors in media influence how we perceive time, like suspense scenes being perceived as longer than they actually are.

Mood and Time Estimation

• Mood of a person acts as a crucial factor influencing the perception of time. There is a common belief that time passes more quickly during pleasant experiences compared to unpleasant ones.
• Numerous studies further confirm a pattern, where positive stimuli are underestimated and negative stimuli are overestimated in terms of perceived duration.

Cognitive Processing of Temporal Information

• Information about time is processed based on different knowledge domains, including both psychological and physical ones.

Age and Duration

• Research examines conceptual acquisition of duration and age, regarding whether they are simultaneous or successive in cognitive development, in line with Piaget's ideas.
• Problems concerning past or future age and duration are presented to children between 6 and 9 to examine if developmental progress through tasks concerning time is indeed sequential or simultaneous..

Time—Representation of Quantification

• Children's cognitive representations of time may involve concepts of number and spatial figures or even more complicated metaphors like light years..
• Number use represents temporal duration through numerics; figures represent it through spatial metaphors, a crucial part of understanding temporal reasoning processes.

Temporal Representations & Problem-Solving

• Research investigates children's knowledge, mental representations of time, and strategy choices when solving temporal problems in reasoning or problem-solving processes.
• The goal involves examining cognitive difficulties faced by such children when faced with time-related problems.
• Factors like number and figures and the associated representation help with quantification to understand the concept of time.

Results of Research Study of 8 to 10-Year-Old Children

• 8 to 10-year-olds generally do not fully grasp time duration and succession.
• Using numbers improves the ability to represent time through figures.
• Children in this age group exhibit weak metacognitive skills relating to temporal problems.

Time and Cognitive Conflict

• Research examines the role of conflict (internal or external) in the production of generalized knowledge, particularly relating to unfamiliar scientific or conceptual areas.
• Experiments frequently use unfamiliar concepts, like "light-year", to create this conflict and test the cognitive abilities.
• The experimental paradigm involved measuring the effect on individuals experiencing conflict, particularly how such conflict is managed in their representations.