By: Natalie Oulikhanian
Time does not cease for anyone or anything. We find it an integral part of our daily life and in all the actions we do, despite our requests for it to slow down or quicken. It never fails to be omnipresent and constantly fixed to ourselves in all our actions such as while we walk home, listen to a favourite song, or write an exam. Even before a child gains an awareness of time’s passing, they will still have lived in time’s same essence that had affected their caretakers identically. For such a constant and unchanging force, there is no organ or receptor for time in our body. Our biological clocks are tuned in with circadian rhythms, astronomical cues, and biological hormones, and can only do so much to notice broad patterns in the passage of night and days or months and seasons. Although the chronological motion of time according to its definition in physics as “whatever a clock reads” can only be measured through clocks, our perception of time will be constantly stretched or slowed in our lives. Certain minutes, days, months, or years can feel much slower or faster than others both in the moment or in memory.
The significance of our perception of time, often referred to as “mind time,” relative to measurable “clock time,” is best visible throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting back to the days when people could freely travel and students could safely go to school, this period can feel almost like a distant memory in our mind or perhaps just like the-other-day regardless of how much time actually had passed. For many, the extreme change from what we considered normal into conditions of mundane daily routines has made time feel like it is passing slowly in the moment. This is because the brain’s perception of time is directly linked to our emotional state and the attention that is given to an activity. The expression is true: a watched pot never boils. When we lack excitement and change, the minutes will only drag on in our mind. However, the moment we are busy or are doing something exciting, we believe time flies by since there is less new information for the brain to process and make time for connections.
Individual perception of time does not only fluctuate in small moments but is ever-changing as we age and grow. The brain must be able to process and organize the new or old visual information it is provided. Its processing occurs in quick eye movements called saccades where eyes locate the most interesting components of an image. For infants and children, it takes much less time to fixate on those elements and therefore gives them much more time to understand their surroundings. As children experience the world for the first time, they are constantly exposed to a variety of new images. Their excitement to quickly learn about everything around them has them quickly switching between image to image to learn. Making memories of new information forces the brain to work more, giving the illusion time lasts longer in the moment. Through being subject to routine and repetition in lockdown, much of the world found themselves to be bored from a lack of stimulus and novelty. The fewer memories the brain puts its resources into making, the faster it feels like time is going in the long run.
As people age, the process of producing mental images slows down, which gives the sense time passes much more quickly in the moment. Aging transforms the physical features of people that are key in image processing such as vision, brain complexity, and affects the pathways that transmit information in the brain. Additionally, when time is viewed as a proportion to what we have already lived, when we grow older time appears to accelerate. For a two-year-old, a year is half of their life. This is why a toddler might think it takes such a long time to wait between birthdays. According to a logarithmic scale, the five-year period one experiences between the ages of five and ten could feel like the same period of time between the ages twenty and forty. Fatigue also affects the processing power of the brain, and the rate of which saccades fixate. A tired brain will not be able to transfer information about a visual image when it cannot fully understand the visual information it is provided. Tired athletes, for example, will have a hard time responding and reacting to new situations within their sport — affecting their overall performance.
While our brains cannot literally stretch or shorten time itself and allow us to perceive moments we previously could not have seen otherwise, the perception of how long the memory of a certain activity lasted does change. For example, life-dependent situations such as car accidents might cause the victim to recall the memory of the incident to have lasted longer than a witness would remember. Although seconds have not actually been spread out, the amygdala — the specific region of the brain that controls emotional and stressful responses — will be triggered, causing more of the brain’s resources to be used in creating memories of the moment. Similarly to how children will gain the illusion that their day lasts longer because of how much the brain works in making sense of new images, the memories of these stressful experiences become rich in detail. For those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, their experiences are unfavourably strong and the length of the memories is perceived to be longer than their others.
Our personal perception of time is always in flux. As much as a clock is able to measure time at a consistent pace, there is no uniform perception of a clock’s time that can be experienced by everyone. Different situations and conditions make an orbit around the sun feel no longer determined, but rather a movement that can be slowed or sped up. Throughout the pandemic, the intensity of which we can feel these different perceptions became clear. For many, lockdown orders generated stress and repetitiveness. The brain found itself not needing to put its resources into making stimuli-inducing memories, causing time to feel like it has been going unusually faster or even slower in the long-run than normal. One’s perception of time is not like someone else’s. Our perception of time reveals much of our individual emotional state, depending on what activities we are engaged in, our point in life, and even if we get enough rest. Multiple different versions of time make up our understanding of it, making it constant in the only sense that it is constantly changing. By breaking out of unfulfilling habits and allowing our brain to process new memories by picking up a new hobby for example, our perception of time during the pandemic may just change and feel more similar to normal life.
Comprehension Questions:
How does the perception of time differ from the time on a clock?
Although the time passing on a clock is constant, our individual perception of a period of time’s length is ever-changing. Our perception of time is especially related to how much new information the brain must process in creating a memory of that moment. Other factors such as emotional state, the attention given to an activity, and age, change our perception of a time period.
How has the pandemic changed our perspective of time?
The drastic switch between our way of life from before and during the pandemic not only forced changes in our activities but also changed our perception of time. Without the normal amount of stimulus we’d experience in pre-lockdown living, the brain was forced to change its memory-making process by adapting to a difference in the amount of new images. For many, the pandemic had also caused a change in their emotional state through its uncertainty. Feelings of stress or excitement often have made us perceive an acceleration of time, whereas sadness or boredom stretches it out.
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