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Psychological Time

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Psychological Time
Time is a vital dimension that attributes to our perception. The perception of time incorporates interval length estimation and subjective passage of time judgments. Interval length estimates are defined as “the subjective evaluation of duration of time.” When in the course of the study researchers use verbal estimation which allows them to break the barrier of this perception based experience. Interval length judgment is dependent upon methodological factors which the study paradigm is of great importance. A pivotal point in any study based on time perception is between the retrospective and prospective paradigm. The retrospective paradigm is where the study participants are not aware that they will have to estimate interval length. The prospective paradigm is where the participants know in advance that they will estimate the interval length in the midst of others tasks. Researcher’s findings point to the cognitive load as being one of the most important variables that determines the interval length estimates. In the retrospective paradigm the more difficult the task the longer the interval is estimated. Researchers believe this is because the amount of information encoded is used to make estimations on the time elapsed. The prospective paradigm the interval is perceived as shorter than it really is when the task is difficult. Researchers believe that a person has less cognitive resources available to process the temporal information.
Objectives of Research
One of the objectives in this study is to investigate in the prospective paradigm the influence that temporal relevance and task difficulty has on both interval length and subjective passage of time judgments. The second objective is to find the interaction between task difficulty and temporal relevance and their impact on interval length and subjective passage of time judgments. The third objective is to find if any a relationship between interval length judgments and subjective passage of time judgments. The final objective is to rate the hedonic interest.
The study consisted of 78 undergraduate students. 71 of them were women and the remaining 7 were men. The study had IRB approval. A two-factor design was used for the research. The first factor was task difficulty which comprised of two levels, shallow/structural processing and deep/semantic processing. In the shallow/structural group participants read a text printed in Times New Roman font size 12 to identify all the words that began with the letter S. In the deep/semantic group were given the same directions but had to find synonyms for the words beginning in S. The second factor of the research is temporal relevance. This had two levels as well, high and low temporal relevance. The high temporal relevance group was told that they had a time limit and should work as quickly as possible. When starting and stopping a task they would hear the words stop and start. The low temporal relevance group was just told start when they were supposed to start. Participants were assigned randomly to the four groups. After receiving the instructions all the participants were told they would have to estimate the length of the task after completion. All participants were told to stop working after 4 minutes. The measures of time in the participants mind consisted of interval length judgment, subjective passage of time judgments and ratings of hedonic interest. After the participants heard the word stop they were asked to make verbal estimates for the temporal length of the task which is an interval length judgment. The participants were also asked to indicate how quickly time seemed to pass which is subjective passage of time judgments. Finally the participants were asked to rate the hedonic interest. In the high temporal relevance group participants perceived the interval length as longer. Participants also perceived time to be longer in the shallow processing group opposed to the deep processing group. For the difficult task there was not a difference between the interval length estimates given by the participants in the low temporal relevance group or in the high temporal relevance group. In the simple task group participants in the high temporal relevance group estimated a much longer interval than the low temporal relevance group. Temporal relevance had a significant effect on subjective time passage judgments. In the high temporal relevance group participants perceived time as passing more slowly. This effect on perception of time due to the level of processing was also seen in the shallow and deep processing groups. Participants perceived time moving more slowly in the shallow group opposed to the deep group. For the difficult task there was no difference between high and low temporal relevance. For the simple task participants aware of time passage perceived time as moving much slower. The ratings of hedonic interest did not correlate with interval length or subjective passage judgments. The results of this study indicate when the dimension of time becomes more relevant we pay closer attention to it. When paying closer attention to time we perceive it to be longer. We also tend to perceive simpler tasks to take longer than they actually do. The more attention a task at hand demands the shorter the estimate of time it takes will become. The attention to time increases when a task is easy and when time becomes relevant such as a task with a deadline. The study suggests that when a task is difficult the interval length is perceived as shorter than for simple tasks. When a task is simple and the individual is aware of the time passage the interval length is perceived as longer than it actually is. With a simple task there are more resources allocates for temporal processing. The study also suggests that time passage judgments seem to be affected by the same factors as interval length estimation. Time is perceived as slow when we are aware of it and solving tasks are not difficult. No correlation was found between interest/boredom and the perception of time but this could largely be due to the indifference to the task chosen. The study also comprised mostly of participants who were undergraduate females where the results may differ with age and sex.
After forming my own conclusions from what I have learned in class and from the information this study made apparent I believe our perception of time is largely based on experience. When we experience something for the first time we perceive time to be so much faster. When something is new it is fully engaging therefore we forget about time rather than doing something mindless in which time seems drag. When we can associate experiences with many previous experiences are mind can venture into a similar mindless state as performing an easy task. All in all I believe the results of the experiment were predictable and in the end reassuring to my assumption.

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