Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Psychological Time

  • Chapter
Philosophy and Psychology of Time

Part of the book series: Studies in Brain and Mind ((SIBM,volume 9))

Abstract

People live in a constantly changing dynamic environment. Our internal environment is also dynamic and is characterized by biological and mental processes that are in constant flux. Without these changes in both the external and internal environments, life on earth would not exist. The dimension along which all these changes occur is called “time.” Without dwelling on its exact nature, “time” can be represented by a clock and is a useful notion that provides a good explanation for physical phenomena in our external environment. Like other organisms, humans must be able to relate to “time” to survive and adjust to the external environment. This presupposes that information about “time” is conveyed and perceived. Since no known human perceptual system is dedicated to “time,” subjective temporal experiences are likely to compensate for this lack. Specifically, these subjective experiences may be based on internal changes in events as reflected by internal clocks or memory processes. These changes are monotonically correlated with “time” and thus can provide useful information about its passage. Psychological time is a subjective feeling which is related to the temporal experiences. Nevertheless, psychological time differs from “time,” because it is non-linear and because it is dependent on the nature of events occurring within a time period. The correspondence between psychological time and “time,” though imperfect, is enough to enable reality testing and normal cognitive and social functioning. This chapter discusses and analyzes psychological time, its functions and nature.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Allan, Lorraine G. 1983. The perception of time. Perception & Psychophysics 26(5): 340–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aschoff, J. 1985. On the perception of time during prolonged temporal isolation. Human Neurobiology 4: 41–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Augustine, Saint. 1955. Confessions. Trans. and ed. Albert C. Outler. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/Augustine/Confessions. Accessed 20 Aug 2014.

  • Bentall, R.P. 1990. The illusion of reality: A review and integration of psychological research on hallucinations. Psychological Bulletin 107(1): 82–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Birx, H.J. (ed.). 2009. Encyclopedia of time. Los Angeles: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Block, Richard A. 1989. Experiencing and remembering time: Affordances, context and cognition. In Time and human cognition: A life-span perspective, ed. Iris Levin and Dan Zakay, 333–361. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Block, Richard A., and M.A. Reed. 1978. Remembered duration: Evidence for a contextual-change hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 4: 656–665.

    Google Scholar 

  • Block, Richard A., and Dan Zakay. 1997. Prospective and retrospective duration judgments. A meta-analytic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 4(2): 184–197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Block, Richard A., E.J. George, and M.A. Reed. 1980. A watched pot sometimes boils: a study of duration experience. Acta Psychologica 46: 81–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boltz, Marilyn G. 2005. Temporal dimensions of conversational interaction: The role of response latencies and pauses in social impression formation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 24: 103–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruce, Vicki, and Andy Young. 1986. Understanding face recognition. British Journal of Psychology 77(3): 305–327.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buhusi, Catalin V., and Warren H. Meck. 2005. What makes us tick? Functional and neural mechanisms of interval timing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6: 755–765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coren, S., L.M. Ward, and J.T. Enns. 1999. Sensation and perception, 5th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio, Antonio R., T.J. Grabowski, A. Bechara, H. Damasio, L.L. Ponto, J. Parvizi, and R.D. Hichwa. 2000. Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions. Nature Neuroscience 3(10): 1049–1057.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagleman, David M. 2008. Human time perception and its illusions. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 18: 131–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan, J.R., and A.M. Wing. 1997. The role of internal models in motion planning and control: Evidence from grip force adjustments during movements of hand-held loads. The Journal of Neuroscience 17(4): 1519–1528.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraisse, P. 1963. The psychology of time. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • France, Louise. 2005. The death of yesterday. The Observer. January 23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, W.J. 2004. Time in autobiographical memory. Social Cognition 22(5): 591–605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibbon, John, Russell M. Church, Stephen Fairhurst, and Alejandro Kacelnik. 1988. Scalar expectancy theory and choice between delayed rewards. Psychological Review 95(1): 102–114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, James J. 1975. Events are perceivable but time is not. In The study of time, vol. 2, ed. J.T. Fraser and N. Lawrence, 295–301. Berlin: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gruber, R.P., and Richard A. Block. 2013. The flow of time as a perceptual illusion. The Journal of Mind and Behavior 34(1): 91–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintzman, D.L., and Richard A. Block. 1971. Repetition and memory: Evidence for a multiple-trace hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology 88(3): 297–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, Diane Owen, and Thomas R. Trautmann (eds.). 1995. Time: Histories and ethnologies. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, William. 1890. The principles of psychology, vol. 1. New York: Holt.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, Daniel. 1973. Attention and effort. New York: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kreitler, Shulamith, and Hans Kreitler. 1968. Dimensions of meaning and their measurement. Psychological Reports 23: 1307–1329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kreitler, Hans, and Shulamith Kreitler. 1972. The model of cognitive orientation: Towards a model of human behavior. British Journal of Psychology 63(1): 9–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laje, Rodrigo, and Dean V. Buonomano. 2013. Robust timing and motor patterns by taming chaos in recurrent neural networks. Nature Neuroscience 16: 925–933.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lavie, Peretz, and Wilse B. Webb. 1975. Time estimation in a long-term time-free environment. American Journal of Psychology 88: 177–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lejeune, Helga. 1998. Switching or gating? The attentional challenge in cognitive models of psychological time. Behavioural Processes 44(2): 127–145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levin, Iris. 1989. Principles underlying time measurement: The development of children’s constraints on counting. In Time and human cognition: A life-span perspective, ed. Iris Levin and Dan Zakay, 145–181. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Levin, Iris, and F. Wilkening. 1989. Measuring time via counting. In Time and human cognition: A life-span perspective, ed. Iris Levin and Dan Zakay, 119–143. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Loftus, E.F., J.W. Schooler, S.M. Boone, and D. Kline. 1987. Time went by so slowly: Overestimation of event duration by males and females. Applied Cognitive Psychology 1: 3–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merchant, Hugo, Deborah L. Harrington, and Warren H. Meck. 2013. Neural basis of the perception and estimation of time. Annual Review of Neuroscience 36: 313–336.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michon, John A. 1972. Processing of temporal information and the cognitive theory of time experience. In The study of time, ed. Julius T. Fraser, F.C. Haber, and C.H. Müller, 242–258. Berlin: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Michon, John A. 1990. Implicit and explicit representations of time. In Models of psychological time, ed. Richard A. Block, 37–54. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osuna, Edgar Elias. 1985. The psychological cost of waiting. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 29: 82–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reeves, Adam, and George Sperling. 1986. Attention gating in short-term visual memory. Psychological Review 93(2): 180–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Ewart A.C., and Wanda B. Weaver. 1975. Cognitive processing and time perception. Perception & Psychophysics 17: 363–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wearden, John H. 1995. Feeling the heat: Body temperature and the rate of subjective time, revisited. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Section B 48(2): 129–141.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittmann, Marc. 2009. Psychology and time. In Encyclopedia of time, ed. J.H. Birx, 1057–1064. Los Angeles: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittmann, Marc, and Martin P. Paulus. 2008. Decision making, impulsivity and time perception. Trends in Cognitive Science 12(1): 7–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zajonc, Robert B. 1980. Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist 35(2): 151–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan. 1989. Subjective time and attentional resource allocation: An integrated model of time estimation. In Time and human cognition: A life-span perspective, ed. Iris Levin and Dan Zakay, 365–397. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan. 1992. On prospective time estimation, temporal relevance and temporal uncertainty. In Time, action and cognition, ed. F. Macar, V. Pouthas, and W.J. Friedman, 109–111. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan. 2000. Gating or switching? Gating is a better model of prospective timing. Behavioural Processes 50(1): 1–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan. 2009. Temporal illusions. In Encyclopedia of time, ed. J.H. Birx, 1270–1272. Los Angeles: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan. 2012. Experiencing time in daily life. British Psychologist 25(8): 578–582.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan. 2014. Psychological time as information: The case of boredom. Frontiers in Psychology, Perception Science 5: 917. 1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan, and A. Barak. 1984. Meaning and career decision making. Journal of Vocational Behavior 24(1): 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan, and Jonathan Bentwich. 1997. The tricks and traps of perceptual illusions. In The mythomanias: The nature of deception and self-deception, ed. Michael S. Myslobodsky, 73–104. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan, and Richard A. Block. 1995. An attentional-gate model of prospective time estimation. In Time and the dynamic control of behavior, ed. M. Richelle, V. De Keyser, G. d’Ydewalle, and A. Vandierendonck, 167–178. Liège: Université de Liège.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan, and Richard A. Block. 1997. Temporal cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science 6(1): 12–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan, Arie Bibi, and Daniel Algom. 2014a. Garner interference and temporal information processing. Acta Psychologica 147: 143–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zakay, Dan, Dida Fleisig, and Neta David. 2014b. Prospective timing during conversations. In Time and temporality in language and human experience, ed. Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and Krzysztof Kosecki, 185–197. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Herzliya, 46150, Israel

    Dan Zakay

Authors
  1. Dan Zakay
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dan Zakay .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Bruno Mölder

  2. Department of Behavioral Sciences and Philosophy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Valtteri Arstila

  3. Department of Communication and Psychology, University of Aalborg, Aalborg, Denmark

    Peter Øhrstrøm

Additional information

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Iris Levin, a great time researcher

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Zakay, D. (2016). Psychological Time. In: Mölder, B., Arstila, V., Øhrstrøm, P. (eds) Philosophy and Psychology of Time. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22195-3_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation