Passage of time judgments in everyday life are not related to duration judgments except for long durations of several minutes

Abstract

This study investigated relations between judgments of passage of time and judgments of long durations in everyday life with an experience sampling method. Several times per day, the participants received an alert via mobile phone. On each alert, at the same time as reporting their experience of the passage of time, the participants also estimated durations, between 3 and 33s in Experiment 1, and between 2 and 8min in Experiment 2. The participants' affective states and the difficulty and attentional demands of their current activity were also assessed. The results replicated others showing that affective states and the focus of attention on current activity are significant predictors of individual differences in passage-of-time judgments. In addition, the passage-of-time judgments were significantly related to the duration judgments but only for long durations of several minutes.