If someone enjoys the activity they are doing, then they will perceive time to pass by faster because instead of focusing on how much longer they have to be there, their attention will be directed towards the activity. After all, that is what they like and want to be doing. On the other hand, time will be perceived to slowly drag on and on if one does not enjoy the activity because they just want to be done with it, and they will constantly be focusing on how much time is left so they can stop doing their activity.

    The study of how humans sense and perceive time has been a topic in psychology for decades and even hundreds of years. Scientists have defined time perception as a “clock in the brain” that could be influenced by emotions, attention spans, and environmental factors (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). Studies in recent years focus on which part of the human brain is responsible for such phenomena and what factors influence changes in perception of time (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). The research done in this field can help us understand how the hormones and chemical reactions in the brain impact our awareness of time. The results of those experiments can lead to medical discoveries that might solve issues surrounding attention spans, focussing, depression, stress, and schizophrenia (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). Understanding the passage of time can also help individuals with tasks in daily lives such as time management or stress management (West & Fraisse. 2024). 
    So how exactly does the brain process time? First of all, the brain has two systems for processing time, an automatic timing system that is in charge of time frames up to a second, and a cognitively controlled timing system for longer durations (Wittmann. 2009). Both systems, according to scientists, are controlled by hormones and hormone receptors (Wittmann. 2009). Scientists believe that there’s a certain motor mechanism in the brain that manages our perception of time (Wittmann. 2009). Some natural rhythms found in the body, such as inhale and exhale, walking speed and the pulse were found to relate to one’s perception of time, too (Wittmann. 2009). However, how exactly the brain processes the feeling of time and which part of it is responsible for it is still unclear till today. 
    Additionally, there is the difference between time felt “at the moment” and long-term perception of time (Wittmann. 2009). Time duration felt in the seconds to minutes is usually regulated by hormones, hormone receptors and other factors mentioned above (Wittmann. 2009). However, long-term perception of time, such as the feeling of days, months, years, decades, or even longer are processed through one’s circadian rhythm (Wittmann. 2009), which runs mainly based on the change of sunlight from the day to the night. Studies have shown that people who don’t come into contact with the change of day and night would slowly lose the pattern in their circadian rhythms, therefore losing their perception of days and weeks, and in extreme cases where people haven’t seen the sunlight in months, would start to lose track of the minutes and hours. Although circadian rhythm is not in charge of tasks in daily lives such as waiting in a line, it is still extremely crucial for our lives as we would lose all time orientation without it (Wittmann. 2009). 
    “To perceive is to  become aware of stimulation”. Perceptual time and physical time are not in direct relations, in fact, sometimes they are not even anywhere near related (Wittmann. 2009). Since time itself is not empirical, we humans don’t have any specific organs to “feel” or detect the passage of time the same way we see or hear or use any of the other five senses. Instead, the passage of time is based on observations of the environment, reactions to stimuli and our inner circadian rhythms (Wittmann. 2009). Emotions, past experiences, attention spans, moods, and even personalities can also have an impact on one’s estimate on the duration of time. In conclusion, the experience of time is objective, and could be influenced by a series of factors (Wittmann. 2009). 
    It has been recognized by James McKeen Cattell Fellow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University that emotions can have an impact on how people see the passage of time and how the feeling of happiness can alter one’s focus on time (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). He described the “flow” of time to be caused by the enjoyment of an activity that one doesn’t pay attention to, or rather, realise the passage of time (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). People usually develop a distorted sense of time, feeling that time has passed faster than usual. 
Studies have also indicated that the feeling of reward could be tied to people’s perception of time. It has been proven in experiments that participants think that an image related to the sense of reward lasts longer on a flashing screen than other images shown (known as the oddball effect) (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). Contrary to the sense of reward, the sense of achievement and the approach for motivation is observed to shorten the perception of time (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). It has also been recognized that when people pay more attention to the time, or receive an extensive amount of information, their perception of time increases (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). 
    Unlike other pleasurable emotions, the sense of “awe” has been proven to slow down individuals’ sense of the flow of time (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). Researchers have found that pictures, especially those surrounding nature, have influenced participants in experiments, making them feel as time has slowed down (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). In an experiment done in the Carleton University in Canada, participants reported feeling slower passage of time in natural environments than in urban areas (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). 
    In many experiments, it has been found that people overthink the passage of time when doing something they are afraid of (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). The more scary the activity is for participants, the longer they indicated the passage of time to be. This demonstrates how the feeling of fear can distort people’s perception of time (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). Similarly, a sense of nervousness can also make the passage of a short amount of time feel longer (Wittmann. 2009). Senses of boredom or long-lasting pain are also known to slow down an individual’s feeling of the passage of time (Wittmann. 2009). 
    It is undecided whether the mechanism in the brain responsible for activity has a greater impact on people’s perception of time or the mechanism for attention span, though (Wittmann. 2009). 
    The feeling of the passage of time can vary based on age, too. This is the result of two ways that people estimate time based on a prospective or retrospective vantage, the first being estimation made during the event, while the second being after the event (Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?. 2016). Since the brain bases some estimates of time on how many new memories are made, it’s easier to understand why the older we get, the quicker time seems to fly (Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?. 2016). During our childhoods into teenage years, or even extending into adulthood, we experience many new things, creating new memories (Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?. 2016). But as we age, our lives often go on a daily routine that just seems to repeat itself, creating almost no new memories (Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?. 2016). As those repeating memories overlap, it’s as if time itself is slowing down (Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age?. 2016). 
    Another hypothesis of why time slows down because of age is that our brains process visual information at a slower speed as we age, resulting in the feeling of time speeding up (Bejan. 2019). Professor Adrian Bejan theorised that when we are younger, time is like a camera capturing frames in slow motion, resulting in time feeling faster, since there are more “images per second”(Bejan. 2019). 
To sum up all of the research, time perception is an objective feeling that varies between individuals based on their inner hormones, rhythms in the body (such as the circadian rhythm), moods, memories, age, emotions, mental state, and many other environmental or neural factors. 

Interoceptive Processing and Time Perception:

Salient stimuli: stimulating factors producing automatic responses

Interoception: perception of sensations inside our bodies

Interoceptive alterations: abnormalities relating to interoception

Interoceptive stimuli: bodily sensations stimulating attention

• Interoceptive Buffer saturation index: analyses abilities to process salient stimuli (producing immediate attention) 
  • Measures perception of time based on bodily sensations (contact with skin)

• Recruited 30 healthy female subjects, assessed for interoceptive altercations
  • BDI-II (Beck Depression Inventory)
    • Symptoms of depression
  • EDI-3
    • Risk of eating disorders
  • STAI (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory)
    • Anxiety levels
  • IAc (interoceptive cardiac accuracy)
    • Perception of heartbeats
• Estimated time perception of interoceptive stimuli & visual and auditory stimuli (how long they were touched for)
  • Accurate IAc = accurate perception of time
  • High EDI-3/BDI-II/STAI = less accurate perception of time
• Perception of duration of contact with bodies directly related to mental health

Time Perception Concepts

Prospective paradigms: participants aware that they have to estimate time passed after task

Retrospective paradigms: participants not aware

• Focused on memory of event not direct perception
  • Less accurate estimations

Heuristics: mental strategies & shortcuts to estimate time

• Change depending on age
  • Children: more interesting & eventful events last longer
  • Adults: less eventful events last longer
    • Use sampling heuristics (taking time samples - i.e. constantly checking watch) -> more time has passed than in reality

Time Dilation

Time dilation: time passing at diff rates based on relative motion/position in gravitational field

• Einstein’s theory of relativity: special relativity & general relativity
  • Special relativity: speed of light never changes based on position in gravitational field
    • Spaceship travelling 95% of speed of light to planet 9.5 light years away
      • Stationary on Earth: distance/speed = 9.5/0.95 = 10 years as journey time
      • Crew on spaceship: 3.12 years
  • General relativity: gravitational field
    • Weaker gravity at higher altitude, time moves faster
      • NASA: clock orbits 10 km from black hole with same mass as sun
        • Earth: 1 hour passed
        • Clock: 1 hour 10 minutes passed
• Person crossing Atlantic weekly: after 40 years, experience 1000th of a second less time than non-traveller
• Twin paradox: 1 twin on Earth, other twin on round trip nearing speed of light
  • Meet up: travelling twin younger than stationary

Manipuated Variable

- contestants' enjoyment for certain activities (like or dislike)

Responding Variable

- contestants' perception of how much time has passed when doing the activities 

Controlled Variables 

- the time the contestants will be doing the activities for 

- level of comfort in the space the experiment will be taking place in 

- the types of activities 

- age of participants

1. Gather interested participants

2. Survey them about their interests (i.e.likes and dislikes)

3. Isolate chosen participants in a room (no windows or timing devices) for 10 minutes

4. Have the participants do their chosen activities without telling the time 

5. Once finished, ask how long they were in the room doing the activities for

6. Record their responses 

7. Repeat steps 3 - 6 for each participant 

The results of the experiment are listed below. 

Most participants stated times around 15 minutes, for both likes and dislikes. 

• Most participants perceived more time to pass when they were doing disliked activities
  • Participant B perceived significantly more time to pass when doing liked activities (15 minutes) versus the activity they disliked (5 minutes)
• Most participants estimated the passage of time to be between 5 minutes to 20 minutes 
• Many participants who chose math worksheets ended up doodling and writing all over their sheet after doing one or two questions

In the experiment, most participants stated that their estimate of the passage of time was between 5 to 20 minutes. This wasn’t far from the actual minutes they spent isolated in a room — 10 minutes. According to our research, the circadian rhythm could be responsible for such estimates of time during shorter durations (Wittmann. 2009). Interestingly, three out of six participants chose maths worksheets for their disliked activity, and all three people perceived the passage of time to be 15 minutes or above and they all didn’t finish more than a page of questions. Their higher estimate of the time might have resulted from their boredom of the maths worksheets (concluded from their doodles on the worksheet instead of finishing the questions), which matches the results of our research, being that people perceive more time to pass in boredom (Wittmann. 2009). The participants’ response to activities they enjoy also matches our research, which states that people perceive less time than the actual passage of physical time when doing an activity they enjoy (Dawson & Sleek. 2018). These two results prove our hypothesis, being that people perceive relatively shorter time when doing activities they enjoy and longer time doing something they dislike. 
 

    In this experiment, we explored how people would perceive time when doing activities they either enjoy or dislike when in an environment with no indicators of the passage of time. The result of most trials prove that our hypothesis was correct — most participants (except for participant B) reported feeling a longer passage of time when doing something they dislike while a relatively shorter time when doing an activity they enjoy. The most common answer when we ask participants how much time they perceive was 15 minutes, which wasn’t far from the actual time — 10 minutes, which demonstrates how the brain and inner rhythms of the body can provide a close estimate of the passage of time during shorter durations. Most participants perceived the time of trials to be between 5 to 20 minutes, a wide range based on the fact that they were only doing the experiment for 10 minutes. Although the results of our experiment wouldn’t contribute much to the study in neural sciences surrounding how the brain processes time, it is interesting to see how it proves many phenomena mentioned in our research, such as perceiving more time in boredom, and feeling less time when doing an enjoyable activity. 
 

Although the data collected from this experiment may not have a big impact on the scientific research about neural and psychological sciences, it is interesting to see the theories we've researched about get proven in real life. This experienment can help us understand time perception in our daily lives, such as feeling time to go slower when in boredom or feeling a faster pace of time when doing an enjoyable activity. This field of study, if more discoveries can be made in the future, will help us with many things in life such as time management, stress management, and how to focus. Overall, understanding how the brain process time can help us move forward in several different areas in life, which is why this topic of study deserves our attention. 

The first possible source of error during the experiment was that participants might've looked at the time on a device they either played the games on or did the jigsaw puzzle on. This would've conflicted with their perception of time since they would've known the actual passage of time. Another source of error that might have occured when running the experiment was the moving of the sun and how sunlight changed. Since most of the trials were run after school, some of the rooms participants stayed in had windows facing the outside, meaning that they could've seen the change of sunlight because of the sunset. Although we tried to keep the blinds shut so the sunlight didn't influence the results of the trials, some sunlight could be seen from the rooms. The third possible source of error comes from the participants doing two experiments in a day. Because the participants each did two trials, one for the activity they liked and one for their dislikes, they might have gained an estimate of the time the trials were run for by the second time they did the experiment. This might resulted in the decreased accuracy of the results of the second trial of each participant. 

Our research reveals some additional sources of error in our experiment. First, applying a retrospective paradigm. In our experiment, we used a prospective paradigm, where participants were made aware that they had to estimate the duration of their activity. However, since people don't usually keep track of time during a task, instead focusing on their memory of the event and not the time passed, a retrospective paradigm would be more applicable in everyday life (Subramaniam, 2023, para. 6-7). While this is not a source of error, it would be interesting to see how it would affect participants' perception of time if this experiment were to be continued. Next, time dilation. Time dilation is the passing of time at different rates due to a person's relative motion or position in the gravitational field (May, 2021, para. 1). Depending on the location, the time on our clocks would slightly vary. However, this concept would not greatly affect our project. Over 40 years, a person travelling across the Atlantic ocean weekly would have experienced only 1000th of a second less time than a non-traveller (May, 2021, para. 8). This effect on our experiment would be even smaller, as each participant only did an activity for 10 minutes.

Benjan, A. March 18, 2019. Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/why-the-days-seem-shorter-as-we-get-older/2CB8EC9B0B30537230C7442B826E42F1 

Dawson, J., Sleek, S.. September 28, 2018. The Fluidity of Time: Scientists Uncover How Emotions Alter Time Perception. Association For Psychological Science. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-fluidity-of-time 

Di Lernia, D., Serino, S., Pezzulo, G., Pedroli, E., Cipresso,  P., Riva, G. March 6, 2018. Feel the Time. Time Perception as a Function of Interoceptive Processing. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00074/full 

May, A. November 17, 2021. What is time dilation?. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/what-is-time-dilation 

No, It’s Not Just You: Why time “speeds up” as we get older. March 27, 2019. Science in the News, Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/no-not-just-time-speeds-get-older/

Subramaniam, A. March 30, 2023. Time Perception: How Our Brains Shape Our Sense of Reality. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/parenting-from-a-neuroscience-perspective/202303/time-perception-how-our-brains-shape-our 

West, L. J., Fraisse, P. March 6, 2024. Time perception. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/time-perception 

Wittmann, M., July 12, 2009. The inner experience of time. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685813/ 

Why Does Time Seem to Speed Up with Age? July 1, 2016. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-does-time-seem-to-speed-up-with-age/ 
 

We'd like to thank our science fair teacher, Mrs Friesen for helping us with our project, and always answering our questions about science fair to the best of her knowledge. We are also thankful for our parents, who accomodated to our schedule for running the experiments, helped us get the supplies we require, and transportation. We are very thankful for the participants who signed up to do this experiment during afterschool hours, who patiently waited as we figured things out and accomodated to small, and sometimes weird spaces that they'd have to stay in for the experiment to be accurate. We are really lucky to have all of these people mentioned above to help us with running the experiment and finishing our project.