Most participants felt that the clock ticked by quickly. But for longer durations, such as a decade, a pattern emerged: older people tended to perceive time as moving faster.
When asked to reflect on their lives, the participants older than 40 felt that time elapsed slowly in their childhood but then accelerated steadily through their teenage years into early adulthood. There are good reasons why older people may feel that way. When it comes to how we perceive time, humans can estimate the length of an event from two very different perspectives: a prospective vantage, while an event is still occurring, or a retrospective one, after it has ended.
In addition, our experience of time varies with whatever we are doing and how we feel about it. In fact, time does fly when we are having fun. Engaging in a novel exploit makes time appear to pass more quickly in the moment. But if we remember that activity later on, it will seem to have lasted longer than more mundane experiences. The reason? Our brain encodes new experiences, but not familiar ones, into memory, and our retrospective judgment of time is based on how many new memories we create over a certain period.
In other words, the more new memories we build on a weekend getaway, the longer that trip will seem in hindsight. So, one year in a five-year-old's life seems longer than one year out of an year-old's life. But Dr Irish said current theories suggest our perception of time speeding up as we reflect back on events is all a trick of our memory. Memories are laid down when we have new experiences — and the stronger the emotion associated with the experience, the longer lasting the memory is.
Whether it be a traumatic accident or a pleasurable first kiss, defining memories are part of who we are, Dr Irish said. Importantly, these memories act like signposts, punctuating periods of time in our life and giving it a sense of duration. When we are young, we tend to have more defining experiences — our first date, getting married, our first child — but as we age, we tend to fall into routines, and have fewer new experiences.
Some experiences in our lives — especially negative ones — seem to play back in our memory in what is a bit like slow motion. Dr Irish said this again has to do with memory, and the involvement of a primitive part of our brain called the amygdala. The stronger the memory, the more stretched out time will be when we recall the experience. In fact, according to some of the latest theories of physics, time may not be a fundamental building block of the universe. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
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