David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Time?s Winged Arrow
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY, New York Times
April 20, 2009
Q. As children, it seemed we had to wait an eternity to wait for something to happen. Now, the Sunday paper that just came is here once more. Why is it that as we age, time seems to race along?
Why time often seems to go faster in old age is not well understood, but an hour, a month or a year is a significantly larger part of the lifetime of a 6-year-old than it is of an 80-year-old. Because of this, Stephen Hawking and others have suggested that the difference in perceptions of time amounts to a specific mathematical ratio.
The philosopher and psychologist William James quoted approvingly a passage from a 19th-century French philosopher to that effect but suggested that relative age could not totally explain the phenomenon, and that the monotony of the events of old age compared with the vividness and novelty of the experiences of youth must also be considered.
Modern experimental psychologists have tried to tease out from many other factors just how aging affects the perception of passing time. The methodology has varied.
For example, in a 2004 study in The Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, the researchers noted the difficulty of devising such a study but settled on one in which 86 healthy participants, 15 to 90 years old, were asked to perform tests in which they estimated the amount of time needed to draw a clock and the duration of a neurophysical evaluation they underwent. The results suggested a faster internal clock in the older participants, but the results lost significance when levels of literacy were taken into account.
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY, New York Times
April 20, 2009
Q. As children, it seemed we had to wait an eternity to wait for something to happen. Now, the Sunday paper that just came is here once more. Why is it that as we age, time seems to race along?
Why time often seems to go faster in old age is not well understood, but an hour, a month or a year is a significantly larger part of the lifetime of a 6-year-old than it is of an 80-year-old. Because of this, Stephen Hawking and others have suggested that the difference in perceptions of time amounts to a specific mathematical ratio.
The philosopher and psychologist William James quoted approvingly a passage from a 19th-century French philosopher to that effect but suggested that relative age could not totally explain the phenomenon, and that the monotony of the events of old age compared with the vividness and novelty of the experiences of youth must also be considered.
Modern experimental psychologists have tried to tease out from many other factors just how aging affects the perception of passing time. The methodology has varied.
For example, in a 2004 study in The Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, the researchers noted the difficulty of devising such a study but settled on one in which 86 healthy participants, 15 to 90 years old, were asked to perform tests in which they estimated the amount of time needed to draw a clock and the duration of a neurophysical evaluation they underwent. The results suggested a faster internal clock in the older participants, but the results lost significance when levels of literacy were taken into account.
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