Time will also help quickly. Why does time pass faster with age? Study of the perception of the passage of time

Why does time fly faster and faster? August 18th, 2016

Think about it, it really was like that in childhood - the summer holidays seemed to have no end, and wait New Year's holidays had to forever. So why does time seem to gain momentum over the years: weeks, or even months, fly by unnoticed, and the seasons change at such a dizzying speed?

Isn’t this obvious acceleration of time the result of the responsibilities and worries that have befallen us in our adult lives? However, in fact, research shows that perceived time actually moves faster for adults, filling our lives with troubles and bustle.

There are several theories that try to explain why our sense of time speeds up as we get older.

One of them points to a gradual change in our internal biological clock. The slowing of our body's metabolic processes as we get older corresponds to a slowing of our heart rate and breathing. Biological pacemakers in children pulse faster, which means that their biological indicators (heartbeat, breathing) are higher in a set period of time, so the time feels longer.

Another theory suggests that the passage of time we perceive is related to the amount of new information we perceive. With the emergence large quantity new stimuli, our brain takes longer to process the information—thus, the period of time feels longer. This could also explain the “slow perception of reality” that is often reported to occur in the seconds before an accident. Facing unusual circumstances means receiving an avalanche of new information that needs to be processed.

In fact, it may be that when faced with new situations, our brains imprint more detailed memories, so that it is our memory of the event that emerges more slowly, rather than the event itself. That this is true was demonstrated in an experiment with people experiencing free fall.

But how does all this explain the constant shortening of perceived time as we age? The theory says that the older we get, the more familiar our surroundings become. We do not notice the details of our surroundings at home and at work. For children, the world is often an unfamiliar place, where there are many new experiences that can be gained. This means that children must use significantly more intellectual power to transform their mental representations of the outside world. This theory suggests that time therefore moves slower for children than for adults stuck in the routine of everyday life.

Thus, the more familiar daily life becomes for us, the faster it seems to us that time passes, and, as a rule, habits are formed with age.

It has been suggested that the biochemical mechanism underlying this theory is the release of a neurotransmitter hormone upon perception of new stimuli that helps us learn to tell time. After 20 and until old age, the level of this happiness hormone drops, which is why it seems to us that time passes faster.

But still, it seems that none of these theories can explain with complete certainty where the time acceleration coefficient comes from, increasing almost with mathematical constancy.

The apparent shortening of the duration of a given period as we grow older suggests the existence of a "logarithmic scale" in relation to time. Logarithmic scales are used instead of traditional linear scales when measuring the strength of an earthquake or the loudness of a sound. Because the quantities we measure can vary to enormous degrees, we need a scale with a wider range of measurements to really understand what's going on. The same can be said about time.

On the logarithmic Richter scale (for measuring the strength of earthquakes), an increase in magnitude from 10 to 11 is different from a 10% increase in ground oscillations, which a linear scale would not show. Each increment on the Richter scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in vibrations.

Infancy

But why should our perception of time also be measured using a logarithmic scale? The fact is that we relate any period of time to a part of life that we have already lived. For two year olds a year is half of their life, which is why when you're little, birthdays seem to take so long.

For ten-year-olds, a year is only 10% of their life (which makes the wait a little more bearable), and for 20-year-olds it's only 5%. On a logarithmic scale, a 20-year-old would have to wait until he was 30 to experience the same proportional increase in time that a 2-year-old experiences waiting for his next birthday. It's no wonder that time seems to speed up as we get older.

We usually think of our lives in terms of decades - our 20s, our 30s, and so on - they are thought of as equivalent periods. However, if we take a logarithmic scale, it turns out that we mistakenly perceive different periods of time as periods of the same duration. Within this theory, the following age periods would be perceived equally: five to ten, ten to 20, 20 to 40, and 40 to 80.

I don't want to end on a depressing note, but it turns out that five years of your experience, spanning ages five to ten, is perceived to be equivalent to a period of life spanning ages 40 to 80.

Well, mind your own business. Time flies, whether you are enjoying life or not. And every day it flies faster and faster.

Here's a slightly related topic about why we don't remember being kids.

According to Freud

Sigmund Freud drew attention to childhood forgetfulness. In his 1905 work, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he reflected in particular on amnesia, which covers the first five years of a child's life. Freud was sure that childhood (infantile) amnesia is not a consequence of functional memory disorders, but stems from the desire to prevent early experiences - traumas that harm one’s own “I” - from entering the child’s consciousness. The father of psychoanalysis considered such traumas to be experiences associated with knowledge of one’s own body or based on sensory impressions of what was heard or seen. Freud called the fragments of memories that can still be observed in the child’s consciousness masking.

"Activation"

The results of a study by Emory University scientists Patricia Bayer and Marina Larkina, published in the journal Memory, support the theory about the timing of childhood amnesia. According to scientists, its “activation” occurs in all inhabitants of the planet without exception at the age of seven. Scientists conducted a series of experiments in which three-year-old children participated and were asked to tell their parents about their most vivid impressions. Years later, the researchers returned to the tests: They invited the same children again and asked them to remember the story. Five- to seven-year-old participants in the experiment were able to recall 60% of what happened to them before the age of three, while eight- to ten-year-olds were able to recall no more than 40%. Thus, scientists were able to hypothesize that childhood amnesia occurs at the age of 7 years.

Habitat

Canadian psychology professor Carol Peterson believes that environment, among other factors, influences the formation of childhood memories. He was able to confirm his hypothesis as a result of a large-scale experiment, the participants of which were Canadian and Chinese children. They were asked to recall in four minutes the most vivid memories of the first years of life. Canadian children remembered twice as many events as Chinese children. It is also interesting that Canadians predominantly recalled personal stories, while the Chinese shared memories in which their family or peer group were involved.

Guilty without guilt?

Experts at the Ohio State University Medical Center believe that children cannot connect their memories with a specific place and time, so later in life it becomes impossible to reconstruct episodes from their own childhood. Discovering the world for himself, the child does not make it difficult to link what is happening to temporal or spatial criteria. According to one of the co-authors of the study, Simon Dennis, children do not feel the need to remember events along with “overlapping circumstances.” A child may remember a cheerful clown at the circus, but is unlikely to say that the show started at 17.30.

For a long time it was also believed that the reason for forgetting memories of the first three years of life lies in the inability to associate them with specific words. The child cannot describe what happened due to lack of speech skills, so his consciousness blocks “unnecessary” information. In 2002, the journal Psychological Science published a study on the relationship between language and children's memory. Its authors, Gabriel Simcock and Harleen Hein, conducted a series of experiments in which they tried to prove that children who have not yet learned to speak are not able to “encode” what happens to them into memories.

Cells that “erase” memory

Canadian scientist Paul Frankland, who actively studies the phenomenon of childhood amnesia, disagrees with his colleagues. He believes that the formation of childhood memories occurs in the short-term memory zone. He insists that young children can remember their childhood and talk colorfully about ongoing events in which they were recently involved. However, over time, these memories are “erased.” A group of scientists led by Frankland suggested that the loss of infant memories may be associated with an active process of new cell formation, which is called neurogenesis. According to Paul Frankland, it was previously believed that the formation of neurons leads to the formation of new memories, but recent research has proven that neurogenesis can simultaneously erase information about the past. Why then do people most often not remember the first three years of life? The reason is that this time is the most active period of neurogenesis. The neurons then begin to reproduce at a slower rate and leave some of the childhood memories intact.

Experienced way

To test their assumption, Canadian scientists conducted an experiment on rodents. The mice were placed in a cage with a floor along which weak electrical discharges were applied. A repeated visit to the cage caused adult mice to panic, even after a month. But the young rodents willingly visited the cage the very next day. Scientists have also been able to understand how neurogenesis affects memory. To do this, the experimental subjects artificially caused an acceleration of neurogenesis - the mice quickly forgot about the pain that arose when visiting the cage. According to Paul Frankland, neurogenesis is more a good thing than a bad thing, because it helps protect the brain from an overabundance of information.

sources

I recently moved to new apartment. It just so happens that it is located on the 24th floor. For obvious reasons, you have to take the elevator every day. True, once I did try to climb the stairs and even timed it - I had to spend five minutes. I don't know why I wrote this.

I'll go back to the elevator. A few days later, I began to notice that the time in the elevator, when you are traveling alone and when with strangers, feels different. I realized that this was due to awkward silence and the desire to quickly get out of the enclosed space you share with a stranger. But I was curious:

There are enough situations in our lives when time flows either faster or slower. Why is this happening?

Naturally, when we are standing in line, in an elevator, or simply doing something uninteresting, time does not slow down. Likewise, interesting moments do not pass faster. But something is changing, because it’s not for nothing that time really seems to flow differently.

Our perception of time is changing. For example, people who have ever been in emergency situations recalled that everything seemed to slow down and the mode turned on. slow motion(slow motion). This is a cognitive error that helps us react faster to events.

Moreover, time slows down in the same way not only in situations when we are on the verge of life and death, but also when we experience strong emotions of fear or disgust. Claudia Hammond, author of Time Warped, recalls an experiment in which subjects with arachnophobia were shown spiders for 45 seconds and then asked to answer how much time had passed. The vast majority called numbers an order of magnitude longer than 45 seconds.

Sometimes time passes faster. And this is not always good. For example, many people in adulthood say that time moves faster than in childhood. This is easily explained by the theory of proportionality:

Time passes faster when you are 40 years old because it is only one fortieth (1/40) of the total time you have lived. While for an eight-year-old child it is one eighth (1/8).

However, the theory of proportionality does not stand up to criticism. According to Hammond, we cannot evaluate a day or a week as a separate unit of time. In this case, for a forty-year-old person, a day would turn into a flash, since they are equal to only 1/14,000 of his life.

One day at 40 can be as boring or fun as one at eight. The theory of proportionality ignores factors such as emotions and a person's attention span.

So Claudia Hammond had to look for another theory to explain why time passes faster as we age. The answer is also found in cognitive distortions and is called the “telescope effect.” The hypothesis linking the distinctness of memories and the assessment of when they occurred was first put forward by psychologist Norman Bradburn:

The less we remember about a past event, the more we believe that it happened earlier than it actually did.

However, Hammond was able to explain another very interesting paradox associated with travel. Why does it seem to us that time flies by unnoticed when we are on vacation, but when we look back we realize that this is not so?

Everyday life is a list of familiar events that flow in a normal rhythm. While resting, we receive a large flow of new sensations, which is why it seems to us that time is passing faster.

The paradox of time slowing down and speeding up in our minds is a very interesting phenomenon. We do not know how to control it and are unlikely to learn in the future. This is another unusual survival mechanism that does not always work as it should, but without which we would not be people in the usual sense.

So, for example, waiting a whole year for your 10th birthday seems incredibly long! But at 45 you don’t think so, “The year has passed,” we say, “summer is coming…” we remember after the New Year holidays.

Besides, as you get older, the years you live seem so fleeting. And we think, “Eh...I could do more.”

But it is worth noting that age is not the only reason for the passage of time.

1. The unknown.

There is no zone in our brain that controls time. Therefore, everything is subjective, depending on the level of development of memory and attention. When we encounter something new, something that requires more time to learn, we feel like we are wasting a lot of time. This is why the road to a new place seems much longer than the road back.

When we are doing our usual thing, time flies quickly, and when we learn something new, it slows down.

“I remember how on new job, I had to learn new responsibilities as quickly as possible. There was so much information that I simply did not have time to consciously fulfill my duties: I did something on a piece of paper, I constantly asked questions about something. The first month seemed to last forever: very slow, monotonous and exhausting. I constantly looked at the clock and waited for the work day to end.

Today I do my work automatically and when there are a lot of clients, I don’t even notice how the day flies by!”

Olga, 28 years old

1. Emotions.

If you like to do something, for example, you are happy to build a career at your favorite job, then time will fly by quickly for you. And if you go to the office and feel that you are not doing what you love, and every day you feel sad when you come to work, then naturally time will drag on forever.

“I don’t watch happy hours,” Griboyedov said. This is partly true. Scientists have proven that people who are carried away by pleasant chores, spending time with people they like, do not notice how time flies. And vice versa: those who are exhausted, waiting for the end of the working day or their turn in the hall, suffer. This also applies to those who are experiencing the grief of losing loved ones. And in their worldview, time slows down or stops altogether.

1. Well-being.

Our well-being also affects our perception of time. If we are sick, then time slows down. And when we recover, the time spent in illness seems fleeting.

1. Cultural characteristics and technological process.

We live in an era when many more events happen to us in 1 year than to people just 100 years ago.

The urban rhythm of life speeds up our sense of time. But we are all the same when we sit down to scroll through our news feed on social networks or turn on our favorite series on TV. We simply don't notice how time flies. And sometimes, 15 minutes in sensations and 1.5 hours in reality pass by.

What to do?!

If time flies slowly for you in all areas of life, then load your brain with something: remember what you loved to do before, maybe a hobby from the past will help you.

If time flies quickly for you, then, for example, a watch, as well as time management, can help you here. Don't get distracted by many tasks, complete one, and only then start the next one.

Scientists gather to agree on what is important give an account of time ! By controlling our sensations at each specific moment, we will learn and discover eternity.

An interesting video about how to stop time from passing by.

Diana Raab

American author, psychologist, teacher and motivational speaker.

Why does time begin to pass faster as you age?

The endless summer of childhood ends, time begins to move faster and faster. Everyone faces this sad fact sooner or later.

There are various theories why this happens. The most logical is that in childhood and adolescence we constantly do something for the first time. The first kiss, the first night away from home, the first love, the first day at school or university, the first car... Each such first event fascinates and makes us remember the smallest details. And the more we remember it, the more intense it seems.

When we experience a similar experience again and again, there is no longer that novelty. Therefore time speeds up.

We experience a similar state in. The first few days don't go by as quickly as the next few days. This is because in the second part of the trip the surroundings become more and more familiar.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman, who studies time perception, calls it an elastic thing that changes depending on how closely we interact with our experience. The stronger this connection, the slower time moves.

Time slows down if we are attentive. Because we just start to notice more.

This happens especially often during emergency situations or some traumatic events, since in this case we are more likely to focus on details. If you've ever been in a car accident, you probably remember the feeling that the ambulance was taking forever.

How to slow down time

If time depends on our perception, then we are able to slow it down.

A good way is to train mindfulness.

This can be done while eating, savoring each bite of food slowly and for a long time. This is called mindful eating.

Another way is to be in nature, watching water or trees and listening to birdsong.

Here are some topics you can use for this exercise:

• Write about special moments from the past year.
• Write about all the moments related to birth or death that affected you.
• Write about achievements that you are proud of.
• Write a letter of gratitude to someone who did something kind for you.
• Write about a new passion.
• Write about any positive changes in your life.

Other ways to develop mindfulness are described in these articles.

Time- a relative concept invented by people to designate the form in which physical and mental processes of life occur. Time is needed to measure life. But why does time pass faster as you age?

More A. Einstein said that time is an illusion, just like space. Psychologists also agree with the great physicist.

How can you find out what time actually is if the only one instrument of cognition – human brain? All the world around us– subjective reflection of objective reality. The psyche determines the world and the passage of time. Personal life experience, consciousness, memory, thinking - all this is not somewhere outside, but inside.

If a person were flying at the speed of light in outer space, he would perceive time as if he were walking on earth, but year his flight would be equal hundred years on Earth!

Two people perceive the same event differently. The way a person is used to perceiving the world is the norm for him, he is used to living this way. It is difficult to imagine and guess that the world is not the same as we see it. A simple example: many people suffering from color blindness find out about it completely by accident and only in adulthood. For example, during a car driving course it is discovered that a person cannot distinguish a red light at a traffic light.

Physics belongs to the category of exact sciences, but physical dimension time doesn't match with the way the human brain perceives it. The psyche changes the laws of physics. Every person has their own internal clock.

When a person is happy, minutes pass very quickly for him, and when he is in a dangerous situation, the second practically stops, stretching out incredibly. An eventful period is perceived as longer and longer as time passes. When a person is bored, the hours go by slowly, it seems that the day will never end, but then, looking back at a series of such days, it seems that time has flown by very quickly and in vain.

These days everything more people notice that time flies faster with age, and scientists are increasingly beginning to study this phenomenon.

Eat several versions, why time passes faster with age. The most common of them:

• the space-time continuum changes and accelerates,
• time accelerates as metabolism in the human body slows down;
• people in recent years began to perceive time as increasingly accelerating due to information overload,
• With age, time speeds up due to the fact that life becomes less rich in new experiences.

The latter version is followed by most psychologists.

Life cannot be measured by hours

The human brain concentrates and commits to memory new experience and significant events are more frequent and brighter than usual actions. The amount of time lived is not calculated in years, but in important events.

Psychologists have proven that the perception of time depends on what a person thinks, feels and does at the current moment.

In childhood and adolescence, a child learns about the world and himself. Every day he meets and learns something new, so the period of life up to 18 years always seems rich and long. Growing up, an individual finds less and less new things for himself, more and more repetitions and habitual actions. Routine classes turn into “gray everyday life.”

An adult lives "on autopilot" therefore, the brain “imprints” life less and less. At 5 years old, in one day a child learned so many new things that an adult would not learn in a year of life at 50 years old.

By doing something new, unusual, exploring the world, a person “turns on” the brain, which most of the time works in “sleep mode”. When activated attention, thinking, imagination, sensation and other cognitive processes, time seems to slow down. Why and why? To have the opportunity to assimilate information, draw a conclusion, and respond correctly.

It has been experimentally proven that in an emergency situation the brain works better. It is also known that in extreme situations time slows down. The body reacts to stress, the instinct of self-preservation activates the brain and it begins to work better. In a split second, in dangerous conditions, you can come up with a solution to a problem that would not be found in a calm environment.

Life– this is a series of lived events, not years. The more eventful life is, the longer it seems.

M. Keener scale

Australian designer M. Keener designed interactive scale, which explains how time perception changes with age. His project is based on the theory of P. Janet, developed back in 1897.

According to this theory, people perceive time relatively comparing him with the already lived period of life. How more years have passed, so Briefly speaking it seems like every next one year in relation to the time lived:

• at the age of one year, a person’s entire life is equal to one year, this is 100% of life,
• at the age of two, one year lived becomes 50% of life,
• three years – 33.3% of life,
• at twenty years old, one year is 5% of life,
• at thirty, one year is perceived as 3% of life,
• at ninety years old, a year is perceived as 1% of life.

At seventy-six years old, a year of life is perceived in duration as a vacation after the first year at the university.

I wonder what after thirty years the acceleration of life slows down and the perception of one year as approximately equal to 3% of life remains.

Thus, the older a person is, the shorter the period for him becomes a year. It is for this reason that subjectively older people consider the age of 18 years to be the middle of life and the best time.

The American psychologist H. Hershwild studied the phenomenon of procrastination (the habit of postponing even urgent matters “for later”) and discovered that a person imagines himself in the future as some other person. By postponing life for later, a person is deceived, thinking that it will not be him, but someone else, who will solve problems and live.

By putting off life, a person wastes time, and when looking back, it seems that life did not exist at all, it flashed by like an instant.

To slow down time psychologists recommend:

• make your life more eventful with bright, new, emotionally deep events;
• constantly learn and learn something new;
• feel and talk about feelings sincerely, without playing or putting it off “for later”;
• develop as a person;
• get out of your comfort zone;
• do what you love and find interesting;
• do not be afraid to change your life, to do what is unusual and unusual;
• do not be afraid to meet difficulties, fears, conflicts, changes.

You need to fill your life with life, enliven it, enjoy every day, appreciate the moments and not waste time!