Time passes too fast? Then recall the past! – Evidence for a reminiscence heuristic in passage of time judgments

Kosak, Ferdinand; Kuhbandner, Christof; Hilbert, Sven

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.01.003

Cited by 16 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In one study, people were asked to recall life events of the last five years just before judging the passage of time for that life interval. People who activated more than four memories judged time as having passed more slowly (Kosak et al, 2019); there was no further linear increase of passage of time judgement with larger numbers of recalled events. A test of the memory hypothesis was undertaken in a study where subjects were asked to form chunks from their distinct memories when writing about last year's events and activities (Landau et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Having Children Speeds up the Subjective Passage of Lifetime in Parents

Wittmann

Mella

2021

Timing Time Percept.

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A widely reproduced finding across numerous studies of different cultures is that adults perceive the most recent 10 years of their lives to have passed particularly fast, and that this perceived speed increases as they grow older. Potential explanatory factors for this effect are believed to be more routines in life as we age as well as an increase in time pressure during middle adult age, both factors that would lead to a reduced autobiographical memory load. Fewer contextual changes in life are known to cause the passage of time to be perceived as faster. Taking advantage of the database created for the study that first captured this age effect on subjective time (Wittmann & Lehnhoff, 2005), we investigated the role that having children plays in the subjective speeding of time. Adults aged between 20 and 59 who had children reported that time over the last 10 years passed subjectively more quickly than adults of the same age group without children. Factors such as education or gender did not influence subjective time. A small correlation effect could be seen in the fact that parents with more children reported that time passed more quickly. Experienced time pressure was not a differentiating factor between the two groups, as time pressure was associated with a faster passage of time in all adults. Future systematic studies will have to reveal what factors on autobiographical memory and time might be accountable for this clear effect that raising children has on perceived time.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Having Children Speeds up the Subjective Passage of Lifetime in Parents

Wittmann

Mella

2021

Timing Time Percept.

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“…In terms of contextual change, this might suggest that under the impression of little contextual changes in recent years, the time since is perceived as having passed comparatively fast. Given that the activation of memories has been shown to mitigate the experience of time passing fast (Kosak et al, 2019), prevention of time flying might be particularly effective when reminiscing in one's recent past. R 2 = 0.05, corrected R 2 = 0.04, p = 0.005.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This anecdotal observation gets evidential support by studies looking at passage of time judgments (POTJs) for longer intervals (ranging from days to 10 years): when asked to judge the experienced velocity of these intervals, reported mean ratings consensually indicate a perception of time passing fast (e.g., Wittmann and Lehnhoff, 2005;Friedman and Janssen, 2010;Kosak et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introduction Autobiographical Memory and The Experience Of Timementioning

confidence: 87%

“…For the experienced passage of years, however, the role of affect has not been investigated yet. As mentioned before, a comprehensive retrieval of all potentially relevant information is obviously impossible, what explains the relevance of currently activated memories on POTJs (Kosak et al, 2019). However, whether the emotional valence of these memories is crucial remains an open question.…”

Section: The Role Of Valence In Time Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This was confirmed in our previous study, where POTJs for the last 5years varied depending on the number of actively recalled memories from this interval: With a certain amount of memories being surpassed, POTJs were slower compared to a control condition with no explicit request to retrieve memories before providing POTJs. On the other hand, retrieving only few memories led to even faster POTJs compared to the control condition ( Kosak et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Reminiscing and the Passage of Years: Investigating the Role of Affective Autobiographical Memories in Passage of Time Judgments

Kosak

Kuhbandner

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Previous research has shown that judgments of the experienced velocity of recent years passing by vary depending on the number of autobiographical memories being activated in the moment of judging. While a body of evidence shows affect to have an impact on both prospective and retrospective judgments on the experience of time for short periods, the effect of valence of memories on the experience of the passage of long intervals has not been examined yet. Thus, we asked 282 people to retrieve five either emotionally positive or negative memories from the last 5years before judging the subjectively experienced passage of time of these years. However, positive and negative events differ in some ways beyond valence, e.g., the ascribed impact on the participants’ subsequent lives as well as the stability of ascribed affective intensity: The latter decreased over time for negative but not for positive memories while ascribed impact was markedly higher for positive memories. Results indicate no significant differences between the two conditions, even after controlling for the aforementioned differences. However, exploratory analyses show that participants rate time to have passed faster, the longer the activated memories dated back on average, a result that seems in line with contextual-change hypothesis.

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Is life going too fast? Exploring the unique and joint contributions of mindfulness, temperament, task load, and metacognitions about time

Morin,

Grondin

2024

Progress in Brain Research

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Time passes too fast? Then recall the past! – Evidence for a reminiscence heuristic in passage of time judgments

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

Having Children Speeds up the Subjective Passage of Lifetime in Parents

Having Children Speeds up the Subjective Passage of Lifetime in Parents

Reminiscing and the Passage of Years: Investigating the Role of Affective Autobiographical Memories in Passage of Time Judgments

Is life going too fast? Exploring the unique and joint contributions of mindfulness, temperament, task load, and metacognitions about time

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